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: CHAPTER III THE DEAR LITTLE GOD! WHEN we went over Hynds House the next morning and took stock, I began to entertain very, very peculiar feelings toward Great- Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett, who, it would appear, had given me a white elephant which I could neither hire out for its keep, nor yet sell out of hand. I had to live in Hynds House, and Hynds House as it stood was n't to be lived in. The rain had ceased, and from the outside jungle came innumerable calls of birds, and fresh and woodsy odors; but the whole aspect of the place was grim and forbidding. At the back, where there was n't such an overgrowth, the lane had been closed, barricaded with barbed-wire entanglements, and fairly bristled with thistles and " No Trespassing " signs. " All this house needs is a mortuary tablet set up over the front door." But Alicia demurred. " I 'm not a bit disheartened," she declared stoutly. " There 's just one thing to be done to this house — first make it beautiful, and thenmake it pay. It can be done. It's going to be done. It's got to be done. And when it's done — we 'll have a home. Vision it as it's going to be, Sophy — rosewood and mahogany and walnut, old brass and china and prints and portraits, the sort of things we 've only been able to dream of up to now. Why, this house has been waiting for us! We were born to come here and make it over: it's our house!" Alicia, has the gay courage of the Irish. The heavy iron knocker on the front door resounded clamorously. " Uncle Adam thinks we 've been ha'nted out of existence, and he 's hammering to wake the dead," said I. But it was n't Uncle Adam to whom we opened the door. An enormous, square-shouldered man stood there, looking from me to Alicia with bright, keen blue eyes behind glasses. He was so big, so mag...