the chickens seemed to like, for they ate them up as fast as they ripened;
and we watched with pride the growth of our Lawton blackberries, which,
after attaining the most stalwart proportions, were still as bitter as the
scrubbiest of their savage brethren, and which, when by advice left on the
vines for a week after they turned black, were silently gorged by secret
and gluttonous flocks of robins and orioles. As for our grapes, the frost
cut them off in the hour of their triumph.

So, as I have hinted, we were not surprised that Jenny should be willing
to remain with us, and were as little prepared for her desertion as for
any other change of our moral state. But one day in September she came to
her nominal mistress with tears in her beautiful eyes and protestations of
unexampled devotion upon her tongue, and said that she was afraid she must
leave us. She liked the place, and she never had worked for any one that
was more of a lady, but she had made up her mind to go into the city. All
this, so far, was quite in the manner of domestics who, in ghost stories,
give warning to the occupants of haunted houses; and Jenny's mistress
listened in suspense for the motive of her desertion, expecting to hear no
less than that it was something which walked up and down the stairs and
dragged iron links after it, or something that came and groaned at the
front door, like populace dissatisfied with a political candidate. But it
was in fact nothing of this kind; simply, there were no lamps upon our
street, and Jenny, after spending Sunday evening with friends in East
Charlesbridge, was always alarmed, on her return, in walking from the
horse-car to our door. The case was hopeless, and Jenny and our household
parted with respect and regret.

We had not before this thought it a grave disadvantage that our street was
unlighted. Our street was not drained nor graded; no municipal cart ever
came to carry away our ashes; there was not a water-butt within half a