row of black and rusted spears, spotted under their tines with
innumerable gray cocoons. (Blair and David made constant and
furtive attempts to lift these spears, socketed in crumbling lead
in the granite base, for of course there could be nothing better
for fighting Indians than a real iron spear.) The orchard behind
the house had been cut in two by a spur track, which brought
jolting gondola cars piled with red ore down to the furnace. The
half dozen apple-trees that were left stretched gaunt arms over
sour, grassless earth; they put out faint flakes of blossoms in
the early spring, and then a fleeting show of greenness, which in
a fortnight shriveled and blackened out of all semblance of
foliage. But all the same the children found it a delightful
place to play, although Blair sometimes said sullenly that it was
"ugly." Blair hated ugly things, and, poor child! he was assailed
by ugliness on every side. The queer, disorderly dining-room, in
which for reasons of her own Mrs. Maitland transacted so much of
her business that it had become for all practical purposes an
office of her Works, was perhaps the "ugliest" thing in the world
to the little boy.

"Why don't we have a real dining-room?" he said once; "why do we
have to eat in a office?"

"We'll eat in the kitchen, if I find it convenient," his mother
told him, looking at him over her newspaper, which was propped
against a silver coffee-urn that had found a clear space on a
breakfast table cluttered with papers and ledgers.

"They have a bunch of flowers on the table up at David's house,"
the little boy complained; "I don't see why we can't."