ur study and I must have my
parlor; and the two girls must each have a room. With the kitchen and
dining room, how many does that make?"

"Ten."

"I thought eight. Well, no matter. You can work in the parlor, and run
into your bedroom when anybody comes; and I can sit in mine, and the
girls must put up with one, if it's large and sunny, though I've always
given them two at home. And the kitchen must be sunny, so they can sit
in it. And the rooms must all have outside light. And the rent must not
be over eight hundred for the winter. We only get a thousand for our
whole house, and we must save something out of that, so as to cover the
expenses of moving. Now, do you think you can remember all that?"

"Not the half of it," said March. "But you can; or if you forget a third
of it, I can come in with my partial half and more than make it up."

She had brought her bonnet and sacque down-stairs with her, and was
transferring them from the hatrack to her person while she talked.
The friendly door-boy let them into the street, and the clear October
evening air brightened her so that as she tucked her hand under
her husband's arm and began to pull him along she said, "If we find
something right away--and we're just as likely to get the right flat
soon as late; it's all a lottery--well go to the theatre somewhere."

She had a moment's panic about having left the agents' permits on the
table, and after remembering that she had put them into her little
shopping-bag, where she kept her money (each note crushed into a round
wad), and had heft it on the hat-rack, where it would certainly be
stolen, she found it on her wrist. She did not think that very funny;
but after a first impulse to inculpate her husband, she let him laugh,
while they stopped under a lamp and she held the permits half a yard
away to read the numbers on them.

"Where are your glasses, Isabel?"

"On the mantel in our room, of course."

"Then you ought to have brought a pair of tongs."

"I wouldn't get off second-hand jokes, Basil," she said; and "Why,
here!" she cried, whirling round to the door before which they had
halted, "this is the very number. Well, I do believe it's a sign!"

One of those colored men who soften the trade of janitor in many of the
smaller apartment-houses in New York by the sweetness of their race
let the Marches in, or, rather, welcomed them to the possession of the
premises by the bow with which he acknowledged their permit. It