surrounding window-shutters and the
crumbled brownstone steps and sills, when it turned out that one of the
apartments had been taken between two visits they made. Then the only
combination left open to them was of a ground-floor flat to the right
and a third-floor flat to the left.
Still they kept this inspiration in reserve for use at the first
opportunity. In the mean time there were several flats which they
thought they could almost make do: notably one where they could get
an extra servant's room in the basement four flights down, and another
where they could get it in the roof five flights up. At the first the
janitor was respectful and enthusiastic; at the second he had an effect
of ironical pessimism. When they trembled on the verge of taking his
apartment, he pointed out a spot in the kalsomining of the parlor
ceiling, and gratuitously said, Now such a thing as that he should
not agree to put in shape unless they took the apartment for a term of
years. The apartment was unfurnished, and they recurred to the fact that
they wanted a furnished apartment, and made their escape. This saved
them in several other extremities; but short of extremity they could
not keep their different requirements in mind, and were always about to
decide without regard to some one of them.
They went to several places twice without intending: once to that
old-fashioned house with the pleasant colored janitor, and wandered all
over the apartment again with a haunting sense of familiarity, and then
recognized the janitor and laughed; and to that house with the pathetic
widow and the pretty daughter who wished to take them to board. They
stayed to excuse their blunder, and easily came by the fact that the
mother had taken the house that the girl might have a home while she
was in New York studying art, and they hoped to pay their way by taking
boarders. Her daughter was at her class now, the mother concluded; and
they encouraged her to believe that it could only be a few days till the
rest of her scheme was realized.
"I dare say we could be perfectly comfortable there," March suggested
when they had got away. "Now if we were truly humane we would modify our
desires to meet their needs and end this sickening search, wouldn't we?"
"Yes, but we're not truly humane," his wife answered, "or at least not
in that sense. You know you hate boarding; and if we went there I should
have them on my sympathies the whole time."
"I see. And then
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