The Reverend Mr. Tracy was having his breakfast in the big yellow house set up on terraces, which were green in summer and white in winter. The house was large, because it was meant to shelter other people beside the Tracys and their children, but there was not a stick of "genteel" furniture in it, the new housemaid from Portland was just disdainfully observing to the cook.
"You'll get over that soon," remarked the cook, with a laugh and a toss of her head, "and will be for givin' away what we've got an' sittin' on the floor. There's the door-bell. You'd better go answer it; it's time the beggars was arrivin'."
Mr. Tracy was late with his breakfast this morning, because he had been out half the night before with a drunken young man who had showed an unconquerable aversion to returning home. Now as he ate his chop and drank his hot milk, fed a parrot by his side, and talked to his wife, who kept moving about the room, he thought of this young man, until he caught the sound of voices in the hall.
"Bessie," he said, quietly, "there's your new maid turning some one away."
His wife stepped into the hall. The housemaid was indeed assuring a poor-looking child that the master of the house was at breakfast and could not see any one.
"Then I'll wait," Mrs. Tracy heard in a dogged young voice. The front door closed as she hurried forward, but she quickly opened it. There on the top step sat a small girl holding a dog.
"Good morning," she said, kindly; "do you want something?"
"I want to see the Reverend Tracy," responded the little girl, and the clergyman's wife, used to sorrowful faces, felt her heart ache as this most sorrowful one was upturned to her.
"Come in," she went on, and 'Tilda Jane found herself speedily walking through a wide but bare hall to a sunny dining-room. She paused on the threshold. That small, dark man must be the minister. He was no nearer beauty than she was, but he had a good face, and—let her rejoice for this—he was fond of animals, for on the hearth lay a cat and a dog asleep side by side, in the long windows hung canaries in cages, and on a luxuriant and beautiful rose-bush, growing in a big pot drawn up to the table, sat a green and very self-possessed parrot. She was not screeching, she was not tearing at the leaves, she sat meekly and thankfully receiving from time to time such morsels as her master chose to hand her.