CHAPTER LI.
MY WIFE PROJECTS HOSPITALITIES.
"My dear," said my wife to me at breakfast, "our house is about done. To be sure there are ever so many little niceties that I haven't got as yet, but it's pretty enough now. So that I'm not at all ashamed to show it to mamma or Aunt Maria, or any of them."
"Do you think," said I, "that last-named respectable individual could possibly think of countenancing us, when we have only an ingrain carpet on our parlor and nothing but mattings on the chambers, and live down here where nobody lives?"
"Well, poor soul!" said Eva, "she'll have to accept it as one of the trials of life, and have recourse to the consolations of religion. Then, after all, Harry, I really am proud of our parlor. Of course, we've had the good luck to have a good many handsome ornaments given to us; so that, though we haven't the regulation things that people generally get, it does look very bright and pretty."
"It's perfectly lovely," said I. "Our house to me is a perfect dream of loveliness. I think of it all day from time to time when I'm at work in my office, and am always wanting to come home and see it again, and have a little curiosity to know what new thing you've accomplished. So far, your career has been a daily succession of triumphs, and the best of it is that it's all so much like you."
"So," said she, "that I can't be jealous at your loving the house so much. I suppose you think it as much a part of me as the shell on a turtle's back. Well, now, before we invite mother and Aunt Maria, and all the folks down here, I propose that we have just a nice little housewarming, with our own little private particular set, who know how to appreciate us."
"Agreed!" said I; "Bolton, and Jim, and Alice, and you and I will have a commemoration-dinner together. Our fellows, you see, seem to feel as much interested in this house as if it were their own."
"I know it," said she. "Isn't it really amusing to see the grandfatherly concern that Bolton has for our cooking-stove?"