he had a dream from which
she woke herself with a cry that roused him, too. It was something about
the children at first, whom they had talked of wistfully before falling
asleep, and then it was of a hideous thing with two square eyes and a
series of sections growing darker and then lighter, till the tail of
the monstrous articulate was quite luminous again. She shuddered at the
vague description she was able to give; but he asked, "Did it offer to
bite you?"
"No. That was the most frightful thing about it; it had no mouth."
March laughed. "Why, my dear, it was nothing but a harmless New York
flat--seven rooms and a bath."
"I really believe it was," she consented, recognizing an architectural
resemblance, and she fell asleep again, and woke renewed for the work
before them.
IX.
Their house-hunting no longer had novelty, but it still had
interest; and they varied their day by taking a coupe, by renouncing
advertisements, and by reverting to agents. Some of these induced
them to consider the idea of furnished houses; and Mrs. March learned
tolerance for Fulkerson by accepting permits to visit flats and houses
which had none of the qualifications she desired in either, and were
as far beyond her means as they were out of the region to which she had
geographically restricted herself. They looked at three-thousand and
four-thousand dollar apartments, and rejected them for one reason or
another which had nothing to do with the rent; the higher the rent
was, the more critical they were of the slippery inlaid floors and the
arrangement of the richly decorated rooms. They never knew whether they
had deceived the janitor or not; as they came in a coupe, they hoped
they had.
They drove accidentally through one street that seemed gayer in the
perspective than an L road. The fire-escapes, with their light iron
balconies and ladders of iron, decorated the lofty house fronts; the
roadway and sidewalks and door-steps swarmed with children; women's
heads seemed to show at every window. In the basements, over which
flights of high stone steps led to the tenements, were green-grocers'
shops abounding in cabbages, and provision stores running chiefly to
bacon and sausages, and cobblers' and tinners' shops, and the like, in
proportion to the small needs of a poor neighborhood. Ash barrels lined
the sidewalks, and garbage heaps filled the gutters; teams of all trades
stood idly about; a peddler of cheap fruit urged his ca
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