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“Sam shall serve our luncheon in here,” he said, with a staid glee.

Jim nodded happily.

“Louisa will not mind,” said Hayward. “She is precise, but she has a fine regard for the rights of the individual, which is most commendable.” He seated himself in a companion chair to Jim’s, lit his own pipe, and threw the match on the floor. Occasionally, when the minister was out, Sam, without orders so to do, cleared the floor of matches.

Hayward smoked and regarded his friend, who looked troubled despite his comfort. “What is it, Jim?” asked the minister at last.

“I don’t know how to do what is right for me to do,” replied the little man, and his face, turned toward his friend, had the puzzled earnestness of a child.

Hayward laughed. It was easily seen that his was the keener mind. In natural endowments there had never been equality, although there was great similarity of tastes. Jim, despite his education, often lapsed into the homely vernacular of which he heard so much. An involuntarily imitative man in externals was Jim, but essentially an original. Jim proceeded.

“You know, Edward, I have never been one to complain,” he said, with an almost boyish note of apology.

“Never complained half enough; that’s the trouble,” returned the other.

“Well, I overheard something Mis’ Adkins said to Mis’ Amos Trimmer the other afternoon. Mis’ Trimmer was calling on Mis’ Adkins. I couldn’t help overhearing unless I went outdoors, and it was snowing and I had a cold. I wasn’t listening.”

“Had a right to listen if you wanted to,” declared Hayward, irascibly.

“Well, I couldn’t help it unless I went outdoors. Mis’ Adkins she was in the kitchen making light-bread for supper, and Mis’ Trimmer had sat right down there with her. Mis’ Adkins’s kitchen is as clean as a parlor, anyway. Mis’ Adkins said to Mis’ Trimmer, speaking of me — because Mis’ Trimmer had just asked where I was and Mis’ Adkins had said I was out in the woodshed sitting with the cats and smoking — Mis’ Adkins said, ‘He’s just a door-mat, that’s what he is.’ Then Mis’ Trimmer says, ‘The way he lets folks ride over him beats me.’ Then Mis’ Adkins says again: ‘He’s nothing but a door-mat. He lets everybody that wants to just trample on him and grind their dust into him, and he acts real pleased and grateful.'”

Hayward’s face flushed. “Did Mrs. Adkins mention that she was one of the people who used you for a door-mat?” he demanded.

Jim threw back his head and laughed like a child, with the sweetest sense of unresentful humor. “Lord bless my soul, Edward,” replied Jim, “I don’t believe she ever thought of that.”

“And at that very minute you, with a hard cold, were sitting out in that draughty shed smoking because she wouldn’t allow you to smoke in your own house!”

“I don’t mind that, Edward,” said Jim, and laughed again.

“Could you see to read your paper out there, with only that little shed window? And don’t you like to read your paper while you smoke?”

“Oh yes,” admitted Jim; “but my! I don’t mind little things like that! Mis’ Adkins is only a poor widow woman, and keeping my house nice and not having it smell of tobacco is all she’s got. They can talk about women’s rights — I feel as if they ought to have them fast enough, if they want them, poor things; a woman has a hard row to hoe, and will have, if she gets all the rights in creation. But I guess the rights they’d find it hardest to give up would be the rights to have men look after them just a little more than they look after other men, just because they are women. When I think of Annie Berry — the girl I was going to marry, you know, if she hadn’t died — I feel as if I couldn’t do enough for another woman. Lord! I’m glad to sit out in the woodshed and smoke. Mis’ Adkins is pretty good-natured to stand all the cats.”