trying his best to put the house in order. Never in all his life
had he labored as he did then, for four years of "batching" will
make a bear's nest out of the most orderly house, but he was
jealous of his task and he refused to share it with other hands.
Pots and pans, rusty from disuse or bearing the accumulated evidence
of many hastily prepared meals, he took out in the back yard and
scrubbed with sand, leaving his bony knuckles skinned and bleeding from
the process; he put down a new carpet in "Bob's" room, no easy task
for a man with an ossified knee joint--incidentally, the "damn
thing" kept him awake for two nights thereafter; he nailed up
fresh curtains, or they looked fresh to him, at her windows, and
smashed a perfectly good thumb-nail in doing so. This and many
other abominable duties he performed. But love means suffering,
and every pang gave Old Tom a thrill of fierce delight for--"Bob"
was coming. The lonely, hungry, aching wait was over.

Constant familiarity with the house had mercifully dulled the
occupant's appreciation of its natural deterioration and the
effects of his neglect, so when he finally straightened his aching
back and regarded the results of his heroic efforts, it seemed to
him that everything shone like new and that the place was as neat
and as clean as on the day "Bob" went away. Probably Hercules
thought the Augean stables were spotless and fragrant when he had
finished with them. And perhaps they were, but Tom Parker was no
demigod. He was just a clumsy old man, unaccustomed to indoor
"doings," and his eyes at times during the last few days had been
unaccountably dim--as, for instance, while he was at work in
Barbara's chamber.

He did not sleep much on the night before the girl's arrival. He