he lease, and they had disposed of the tables and
chairs and some of the china. They inclosed a check for twenty-eight
dollars.

With the six dollars and eighty-three cents left from their capital the
Applebys were the possessors of almost thirty-five dollars!

"Gee! if we only had two or three times that amount we could run away
and start again in New York, and not let Lulu make us over into a darned
old elderly couple!" Father exulted.

"Yes," sighed Mother. "You know and I know what a fine, sweet, womanly
woman Lulu has become, but I do wish she hadn't gone and set her heart
on my wearing that lace cap. My lands! makes me feel so old I just don't
know myself."

"And me with a granddaddy outfit! Why, I never will dast to go out on
the streets again," complained Father. "I never did hear of such a thing
before; they making us old, and we begging for a chance to be young, and
sitting here and sitting here, and--"

He looked about their room, from the broad window with its resolutely
stiff starched net curtains to the very new bureau and the brass bed
that looked as though no one had ever dared to sleep in it. He kicked at
one of the dollar-ninety-eight-cent rugs and glared at the expanse of
smirkingly clean plaster, decorated with an English sporting print
composed by an artist who was neither English nor sporting.

"Say," continued Father, "I don't like this room. It's too--clean. I
don't dast to wear slippers in it."

"Why, Father, it's a nice room!" marveled Mother. Then, with an outburst
of frankness: "Neither do I! It feels like I never could loosen my stays
and read the funnies in the last night's paper. Oh, you needn't to look
at me so! Many's the time I did that when you were away at the store and
I didn't have to sit up and look respectable."

They laughed, both of them, with tender tears. He came to sit on the arm
of her rocker and pat her hand.

He said, quietly, very quietly indeed: "Mother, we're getting to be real
adventurous. Nothing very old about us, I guess! We're going to sneak
right smack out of this house, this very day, and run away to New York,
and I'll get a job and we'll stick right there in little old New York
for the rest of our lives, so help me Bob!"

"Yes," she said, "yes. I'd like to. But what--uh--what lie could we tell
Lulu?"

"Why, Mother, how you talk! Do you know what St. Peter would say to you
if he heard you talk about lying? He'd up and jam his halo down over his
ears