Caleb Wright Author:John Habberton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HI—INTRODUCED - rHE house in which the late Jethro Somerton had lived was a plain wooden structure, entered by a door opening directly into a room which had b... more »een used as a sitting room. Behind this was a kitchen, beside which was a bedroom, while in front, beside the sitting room, was a "best room" or parlor. There was a second floor, in which were four rooms, some of which had never been used. The ceilings throughout the house were so low that Philip, who was quite tall, could touch them with his finger-tips when he stood on tiptoe. The walls of the sitting room and parlor were hard-finished and white; all the other walls were rough and whitewashed. "This is quite out of the question, as a home," said Philip. " No hall, no — " " Why not make believe that the sitting roomis a square hall ?" Grace asked. " They're the rage in the swell villages around New York." " But there's no bath room." "We can make one, on the upper floor, where we've rooms to spare." " Perhaps; but 'tis very improbable that the town has a water service." " Then have a tank, fed from the roof or by a pump, as Aunt Eunice has in her cottage, smaller than this and in a town no larger than Clay banks." " No furnace, of course, to warm the house, and — ugh! — I don't believe the town knows of the existence of coal, for both stoves at the store are fed with wood." "So they were, and — oh, I see! Here are fireplaces in the sitting-room — or hall, I suppose I should say — and in the parlor ! Think how unutterably we longed for the unattainable — that is, an open wood fire—in our little flat in the city ! " " But, dear girl, a fireplace grows cold at night." " Quite likely; but don't you suppose theprincipal merchant in town could economize on something so as to afford enough quilts an...« less