e that I knew
a good piece and a bargain when I saw it. This last may be set down as a
fatal symptom. It led me into vile second-hand stores in the hope of
finding some hitherto undiscovered treasure. In these I hauled over the
wretched jetsam of a thousand cheap apartments and came out dusty and
contaminated but not discouraged.

I suggested to the Little Woman one day that it would be in the nature
of an investment to buy now, in something old and good, the desk I had
needed so long. I assured her that antiques were becoming scarcer each
year, and that pieces bought to-day were quite as good as money in the
savings bank, besides having the use of them. The Little Woman agreed
readily. For a long time she had wanted me to have a desk, and my
argument in favor of an antique piece seemed sound.

I did not immediately find a desk that suited me. There were a great
many of them, and most of them seemed sufficiently antique, but being
still somewhat modern in my ideas I did not altogether agree with their
internal arrangements, while such as did appeal would have made too
large an incursion into the Sum. What I did find at length was a
table--a mahogany veneered table which the dealer said was of a period
before the war. I could readily believe it. If he had said that it had
been _through_ the war I could have believed that, too. It looked it.
But I saw in it possibilities, and reflected that it would give me an
opportunity to develop a certain mechanical turn which had lain dormant
hitherto. The Little Woman had been generous in the matter of the desk.
I would buy the table for the Little Woman.

She was pleased, of course, but seemed to me she regarded it a trifle
doubtfully when it came in. Still, the price had not been great, and it
was astonishing to see how much better it looked when I was through with
it, and it was in a dim corner, with its more unfortunate portions next
the wall. Indeed, it had about it quite an air of genuine
respectability, and made the rest of our things seem poor and trifling.
It was the beginning of the end.

Some Colonial chairs came next.

The Little Woman and I discovered their battered skeletons one day as
we were hurrying to catch a car. They were piled in front of a place
that under ordinary conditions we would have shunned as a pest-house.
Still the chairs were really beautiful and it was a genuine "find"! I
did not restore these myself--they needed too much. I had them delivered