in the face
of several applicants (this was his own statement), I was ready to fall
on his neck, and paid a deposit hastily to secure the premises.

Then we wandered about looking at things, trying the dumb waiter, the
speaking tube, and the push-button, leading to what the Precious Ones
promptly named the "locker-locker" door, owing to a clicking sound in
the lock when the door sprang open.

We were in a generous frame of mind, and walked from room to room
praising the excellence of everything, including a little gingerbread
mantel in the dining-room, in which the fireplace had been set
crooked,--from being done in the dark, perhaps,--the concrete backyard,
with its clothesline pole, the decorated ceilings, the precipitous park
opposite that was presently to shut off each day at two P.M. our
western, and only, sunlight; even the air-shaft that came down to us
like a well from above, and the tiny kitchen, which in the gathering
evening was too dark to reveal all its attractions.

As for the Precious Ones, they fairly raced through our new possession,
shrieking their delight.

We had a home in the great city at last.

II.

_Metropolitan Beginnings._

We set out gaily and early, next morning, to buy our things.

We had brought nothing with us that could not be packed into our trunks,
except my fishing rod, some inherited bedding and pictures which the
Little Woman declined to part with, and two jaded and overworked dolls
belonging to the Precious Ones. Manifestly this was not enough to begin
housekeeping on, even in a flat of contracted floor-space and limitless
improvements.

In fact the dolls only had arrived. They had come as passengers. The
other things were still trundling along somewhere between Oshkosh and
Hoboken, by slow freight.

We had some idea of where we wanted to go when we set forth, but a
storehouse with varied and almost irresistible windows enticed us and we
went no farther. It was a mighty department store and we were informed
that we need not pass its doors again until we had selected everything
we needed from a can-opener to a grand piano. We didn't, and the
can-opener became ours.

Also other articles. We enjoyed buying things, and even to this day I
recall with pleasure our first great revel in a department store.

For the most part we united our judgments and acted jointly. But at
times we were enticed apart by fascinating novelties and selected
recklessly, without consulta