it is, and especially here where it is so hard to get, and
where it takes so much of it to live even respectably. All
that you have so often said about the bohemian life is fine
and beautiful, and true in a way, too, but there are
unpleasant phases of it as well. The struggle is very hard
sometimes, and even Perny and Van, who do not need much
money, and who will never be anything different from what
they are now, even they are glad that they will be worth a
million at least by this time next year.

"Perny has some property out West that he'll be able to hire
somebody to take off his hands then, and Van wants to buy
another old bureau that we saw yesterday at an antique-shop,
though he already has two, and nothing in them except
fishing-tackle that he gets every spring before it is time
to go, and never uses. Then, Van thinks he'd like a house to
keep his bureaus in, too, and Perny wants a place where he
can have whatever he likes to eat, and a lot of people to
help him eat it, while he recites his poetry to them.

"You _know_ what I want a house for--a house that shall be a
home for you and for me, and where, in the soft light of
dim, quiet rooms, I shall sit by you and talk and listen
while time slips on. Do you remember how the time used to
fly when we were together? It seemed always as if some one
must be turning the clock ahead for a joke. I am going to
make a picture some day of two Lovers, and on the mantel
above them Cupid laughing and turning up the clock-hands. We
will make that picture together next year, for you will slip
in and look over my shoulder, and you will take the pen or
the brush and touch here and there; and the editors will
like my pictures better because of those touches; and when
they are printed in the books and papers I will sit
dreaming over my own work because it will not be all mine,
but part Dorry's, too.

"I have never told Perny and Van anything about you, because
I have never quite found the opportunity to do it in the way
I would like. But I think sometimes they suspect, for the
other day, when we went out to look at houses, Perny said he
didn't suppose I'd want my house very close to two old
hardened sinners like them. Then we came to a vacant lot
that was just about large enough