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“Of course, I would never marry without your consent, Aunt Sally,” said Joyce, smiling faintly but affectionately at her aunt. Joyce loved Miss Sally with her whole heart. Everybody did who knew her. There never was a more lovable creature than this pretty little old maid who hated the men so bitterly.

“That’s a good girl,” said Miss Sally approvingly. “I own that I have been a little afraid that this Willard Stanley was coming here to see you. But my mind is set at rest on that point now, and I shall help him fix up his doll house with a clear conscience. Eden, indeed!”

Miss Sally sniffed and tripped out of the room to hunt up a furniture catalogue. Joyce sighed and let her embroidery slip to the floor.

“Oh, I’m afraid Willard’s plan won’t succeed,” she murmured. “I’m afraid Aunt Sally will never consent to our marriage. And I can’t and won’t marry him unless she does, for she would never forgive me and I couldn’t bear that. I wonder what makes her so bitter against men. She is so sweet and loving, it seems simply unnatural that she should have such a feeling so deeply rooted in her. Oh, what will she say when she finds out–dear little Aunt Sally? I couldn’t bear to have her angry with me.”

The next day Willard came up from the harbour and took Miss Sally down to see Eden. Eden was a tiny, cornery, gabled grey house just across the road and down a long, twisted windy lane, skirting the edge of a beech wood. Nobody had lived in it for four years, and it had a neglected, out-at-elbow appearance.

“It’s rather a box of a place, isn’t it?” said Willard slowly. “I’m afraid she will think so. But it is all I can afford just now. I dream of giving her a palace some day, of course. But we’ll have to begin humbly. Do you think anything can be made of it?”

Miss Sally was busily engaged in sizing up the possibilities of the place.

“It is pretty small,” she said meditatively. “And the yard is small too–and there are far too many trees and shrubs all messed up together. They must be thinned out–and that paling taken down. I think a good deal can be done with it. As for the house–well, let us see the inside.”

Willard unlocked the door and showed Miss Sally over the place. Miss Sally poked and pried and sniffed and wrinkled her forehead, and finally stood on the stairs and delivered her ultimatum.

“This house can be done up very nicely. Paint and paper will work wonders. But I wouldn’t paint it outside. Leave it that pretty silver weather-grey and plant vines to run over it. Oh, we’ll see what we can do. Of course it is small–a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and two bedrooms. You won’t want anything stuffy. You can do the painting yourself, and I’ll help you hang the paper. How much money can you spend on it?”

Willard named the sum. It was not a large one.

“But I think it will do,” mused Miss Sally. “We’ll make it do. There’s such satisfaction getting as much as you possibly can out of a dollar, and twice as much as anybody else would get. I enjoy that sort of thing. This will be a game, and we’ll play it with a right good will. But I do wish you would give the place a sensible name.”

“I think Eden is the most appropriate name in the world,” laughed Willard. “It will be Eden for me when she comes.”

“I suppose you tell her all that and she believes it,” said Miss Sally sarcastically. “You’ll both find out that there is a good deal more prose than poetry in life.”

“But we’ll find it out together,” said Willard tenderly. “Won’t that be worth something, Miss Sally? Prose, rightly written and read, is sometimes as beautiful as poetry.”