inctively expected to find the legend "Souvenir of Niagara
Falls." Too many cake-baskets and too few sugar-bowls. Dark blue plates
with warts on the edges and melancholy landscapes painted in the
centers. Chintzes and wall-papers of patterns fashionable in 1890.
Tea-cartons that had the most inspiring labels; cocoa that was bitter
and pepper that was mild; preserves that were generous with hayseed and
glucose.

But everything was varnished that could be varnished; everything was
tied with pink ribbon that would stand for it; the whole collection
looked impressively new to a man accustomed to a shabby flat; the prices
seemed reasonable; and Mother was saved practically all the labor of
buying.

She had clucked comfortably every time he had worried aloud about her
task. Yet she was secretly troubled. It gave her a headache to climb
down the four flights of stairs from their flat. The acrid dust of the
city streets stung her eyes, the dissonant grumble of a million hurrying
noises dizzied her, and she would stand on a street-corner for five
minutes before daring to cross. When Father told her that all the buying
was done, and awaiting her approval, she gasped. But she went down with
him, was impressed by the shininess and newness of things--and the
Hungarian was given a good share of the Applebys' life-savings,
agitatedly taken out of the savings-bank in specie.

They had purchased freedom. The house at Grimsby Head was eager for
them. Mother cried as she ripped up the carpet in their familiar flat
and saw the treasured furniture rudely crated for shipment to the
unknown. She felt that she was giving up ever so many metropolitan
advantages by leaving New York so prematurely. Why, she'd never been
inside Grant's Tomb! She'd miss her second cousin--not that she'd seen
the cousin for a year or two. And on the desert moors of Grimsby she
couldn't run across the street to a delicatessen. But none of the
inconveniences of going away so weighed upon her spirit as did the
memory of their hours together in this flat.

But when she stood with him on the steamer again, bound for the Cape,
when the spring breeze gave life to her faded hair, she straightened her
shoulders and stood like a conqueror.

"Gee! we'll be at Grimsby to-morrow," piped Father, throwing his coat
open and debonairly sticking his thumbs into his lower waistcoat
pockets. "The easy life for me, old lady. I'm going to sit in a chair in
the sun and watch you wor