"Well," said Mr. Downing, "this house certainly looked far more comfortable when I saw it the other day than it does now. Those children must have had the defects very well concealed. They deceived me completely."
"They deceived us all," said Mrs. Milligan, resentfully. "Half of our furniture is ruined. Look at that sofa!"
Mr. Downing looked. The drenched old-gold plush sofa certainly looked very much like a half-drowned Jersey calf.
"Of course," continued Mrs. Milligan, sharply, "we expect to have our losses made good. Then we've had all our trouble for nothing, too. Of course we can't stay here—the place isn't fit for pigs. I suppose the best thing we can do is to move right back into our own house."
"Ye-es," said Mr. Milligan, overlooking the fact that Mrs. Milligan had inadvertently called her family pigs, "it certainly looks like the best thing to do. I'll go and tell the Knapps that they'll have to move out at once—we can't spend another night under this roof."
The Knapps, however, proved disobliging and flatly declined to move a second time. The Milligans had begged them to take the house off their hands, and they had signed a contract. Moreover, it was just the kind of house the Knapps had long been looking for, and now that they were moved, more than half settled, and altogether satisfied with their part of the bargain, they politely but firmly announced their intention of staying where they were until the lease should expire.
There was nothing the former tenants could do about it. They were homeless and quite as helpless as the four little girls had been in similar circumstances; and they made a far greater fuss about it. By this they gained, however, nothing but the disapproval of everybody concerned; so, finally, the Milligans, disgusted with Dandelion Cottage, with Mr. Downing, and for once even a little bit with themselves, dejectedly hunted up a new home in a far less pleasant neighborhood, and moved hurriedly out of Dandelion Cottage—and, except for the memories they left behind them, out of the story.
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