all but not inexpensive
Chippendale cabinet and something to put within it.

The Little Woman called a halt now. She said she thought we had enough
invested in this particular direction, that it was not wise to put all
one's eggs into one basket. Besides, we had all the things our place
would hold comfortably: rather more, in fact, except in the matter of
rugs. The floors of the Sunshine apartment were hard finished and
shellacked. Such rugs as we had were rare only as to numbers, and we
were no longer proud of them. I quite agreed with the Little Woman on
the question of furniture, but I said that now we had such good things
in that line, I would invest in one really good rug.

I did. I drifted one day into an Armenian place on Broadway into which
the looms of the Orient had poured a lavish store. Small black-haired
men issued from among the heaped-up wares like mice in a granary. I was
surrounded--I was beseeched and entreated--I was made to sit down while
piece after piece of antiquity and art were unrolled at my feet. At each
unrolling the tallest of the black men would spread his hands and look
at me.

"A painting, a painting, a masterpiece. I never have such fine piece
since I begin business;" and each of the other small black men would
spread their hands and look at me and murmur low, reverent exclamations.

I did not buy the first time. You must know that even when one has
become inured to the tariff on antique furniture, and has still the
remains of a Sum to draw upon, there is something about the prices of
oriental rugs that is discouraging when one has ever given the matter
much previous thought.

But the memory of those unrolled masterpieces haunted me. There was
something fascinating and Eastern and fine about sitting in state as it
were, and having the treasures of the Orient spread before you by those
little dark men.

So I went again, and this time I made the first downward step. It was a
Cashmere--a thick, mellow antique piece with a purple bloom pervading
it, and a narrow faded strip at one end that betokened exposure and age.
The Little Woman gasped when she saw it, and the Precious Ones approved
it in chorus. It took me more than a week to confess the full price. It
had to be done by stages; for of course the Little Woman had not sat as
I had sat and had the "paintings of the East" unrolled at her feet and
thus grown accustomed to magnificence. To tell her all at once that our
one new possessi