Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/322

312 before, and Joe found himself more solitary than ever. When he went to the war he left the farm in charge of a faithful laborer who had worked on it for years; this man had married, and he and his wife and children now occupied the house in which Joe had lived so long with his mother. The house was large, and there was room enough and to spare for Joe; but it seemed sadly unlike home; yet any other place seemed still more unlike home. Poor Joe did not know what to do.

"You 'll have to get married, Joe, now, and settle down," the neighbors said to him continually.

"Married!" Joe would answer, and point to his empty coat-sleeve. "That looks like it, does n't it!" And an almost bitter sense of deprivation took root in his heart.

One night, when he felt especially lonely, he went up stairs to his room early. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked about the room. It had been his mother's room. All the furniture stood as she had left it; and yet an indefinable air of neglect and disorder had crept into the room.

"I can't live this way," thought Joe; "that 's certain. But I don't suppose any woman would marry a fellow with only one arm. I 'll have to get a housekeeper;" and Joe ran over in his mind the names of all the possible candidates he could think of for that office; not one seemed endurable to him, and, with a sigh, he tried to dismiss the