own to us as a servant's room--and
presently we heard them playing "dumb waiter," "janitor," "locker-locker
door," "laying matting," and other new and entertaining games incidental
to a new life and conditions. The weather remained warm for a time, and
it was all novel and interesting. We added almost daily to our household
effects, and agreed that we had been lucky in securing so pleasant and
so snug a nest.

But one morning when we awoke it was cold. It was early October, but
there was a keen frosty feeling in the air that sent us shivering to the
kitchen range, wondering if steam would be coming along presently. It
did not come, and after breakfast I went down to interview our janitor
on the subject.

I could see that she was not surprised at my errand. The incident of the
gas supply had prepared her for any further eccentricity on my part. She
merely waited with mild interest to hear what I really could do when I
tried. Then she remarked tersely:--

"Yez get steam on the fifteenth."

"Quite so," I assented, "but it's cold to-day. We may not want it on the
fifteenth. We do want it now."

These facts did not seem to impress her.

"Yez get steam on the fifteenth," she repeated, with even more
decision, and I could tell from her manner that the interview was
closed.

I went back to where the Little Woman was getting breakfast (she had
laughed at the idea of a servant in our dainty little nest) and during
the morning she and the Precious Ones hugged the kitchen range. In the
afternoon the sun looked in at our parlor windows and made the room
cheerful for an hour. Then it went out behind the precipitous hillside
park opposite, and with the chill shadow that crept up over our windows
came a foreboding that was bad for the romance and humor of the
situation. It had been like a spiritless Arctic day.

In the evening we crept to the kitchen range; and we hibernated there,
more or less, while the cold spell lasted. It was warm by the
fifteenth, but on that day, in the hours of early dawn, we were awakened
by a Wagnerian overture in the steam radiators. It became an anvil
chorus ere long and there was no more sleep. By breakfast time we had
all the things open that we could get open to let in fresh air and we
were shouting to each other above the din and smell of the new pipes. We
made allowance, of course, for the fact that things _were_ new, and we
said we were glad there would be enough heat in cold weather, anyway