to a cabinet-maker who in turn delivered them to us in a condition that
made the rest of our belongings look even shabbier, and at a cost that
made another incursion into the Sum.

I renovated and upholstered the next lot of chairs myself, and was proud
of the result, though the work was attended by certain unpleasant
features, and required time. On the whole, I concluded to let the
cabinet-maker undertake the heavy lounge that came next, and was in
pieces, as if a cyclone had struck it somewhere back in the forties and
it had been lying in a heap, ever since. It was wonderful what he did
with it. It came to us a thing of beauty and an everlasting joy, and his
bill made a definite perforation in the Sum.

We did not mind so much now. It was merely altering the form of our
investment, we said, and we had determined to become respectable at any
cost. The fact that we had been offered more for the restored lounge
than it cost us reassured us in our position. Most of our old traps we
huddled together one day, and disposed of them to a second-hand man for
almost enough to pay for one decent piece--a chiffonier this time--and
voted a good riddance to bad rubbish.

Reflecting upon this now, it seems to me we were a bit hasty and
unkind. Poor though they were, the old things had served us well and
gone with us through the ups and downs of many apartments. In some of
them we had rocked the Precious Ones, and on most of them the precious
Ones had tried the strength and resistance of their toys. They were
racked and battered, it is true and not always to be trusted as to
stability, but we knew them and their shortcomings, and they knew us and
ours. We knew just how to get them up winding stairs and through narrow
doors. They knew about the length of time between each migration, and
just about what to expect with each stage of our Progress. They must
have long foreseen the end. Let us hope they will one day become
"antiques" and fall into fonder and more faithful hands.

But again I am digressing--it is my usual fault. We invested presently
in a Chippendale sideboard, and a tall clock which gave me no peace
night or day until I heard its mellow tick and strike in our own dim
little hall. The aperture in the Sum was now plainly visible, and by the
time we had added the desk, which I had felt unable to afford at the
start, and a chair to match, it had become an orifice that widened to a
gap, with the still further addition of a sm