espair. I don't wonder the bodies of so
many genteel strangers are found in the waters around New York. Shall we
try the south side, my dear? or had we better go back to our rooms and
rest awhile?"

Mrs. March had out the vertebrate, and was consulting one of its
glittering ribs and glancing up from it at a house before which they
stood. "Yes, it's the number; but do they call this being ready October
first?" The little area in front of the basement was heaped with a
mixture of mortar, bricks, laths, and shavings from the interior; the
brownstone steps to the front door were similarly bestrewn; the doorway
showed the half-open, rough pine carpenter's sketch of an unfinished
house; the sashless windows of every story showed the activity of
workmen within; the clatter of hammers and the hiss of saws came out to
them from every opening.

"They may call it October first," said March, "because it's too late
to contradict them. But they'd better not call it December first in my
presence; I'll let them say January first, at a pinch."

"We will go in and look at it, anyway," said his wife; and he admired
how, when she was once within, she began provisionally to settle the
family in each of the several floors with the female instinct for
domiciliation which never failed her. She had the help of the landlord,
who was present to urge forward the workmen apparently; he lent a
hopeful fancy to the solution of all her questions. To get her from
under his influence March had to represent that the place was damp from
undried plastering, and that if she stayed she would probably be down
with that New York pneumonia which visiting Bostonians are always dying
of. Once safely on the pavement outside, she realized that the apartment
was not only unfinished, but unfurnished, and had neither steam heat
nor elevator. "But I thought we had better look at everything," she
explained.

"Yes, but not take everything. If I hadn't pulled you away from there by
main force you'd have not only died of New York pneumonia on the spot,
but you'd have had us all settled there before we knew what we were
about."

"Well, that's what I can't help, Basil. It's the only way I can realize
whether it will do for us. I have to dramatize the whole thing."

She got a deal of pleasure as well as excitement out of this, and he had
to own that the process of setting up housekeeping in so many different
places was not only entertaining, but tended, through associa