"What does Madame say? Is she not content?" asked William Shakespeare. Herbert's hand shot out behind his back and grasped mine. "Shades of Stratford-on-Avon," he murmured. We had passed a honeymoon day there just a year ago.

It was hard to wait until July 15, and then two days longer for the necessary cleaning by a femme de ménage hired for us by the Sempés. July 17th was the magical day of our first housekeeping. Never before had we been together in a place where everything was ours. Tables and chairs and beds and mattresses, and even the piano rented at ten francs a month, arrived at Twenty-One on hand-carts drawn by men who pulled only a little harder against the greasy harness that bound them to their job than did the dogs under the carts.

Turkish women say that if you must move, abandon the furniture and dishes; they can be had anywhere. But take with you the rugs and brass that you love, and you have your home. During the previous winter in Tarsus, we managed to buy several good rugs, a cradle-shawl, some candlesticks and Damascus beaten-brass trays out of our eight-hundred dollar salary. Don't ask me now how we did it. In retrospect it is a mystery. But we had these things in two big boxes. They were as butter is to bread with our pitch-pine. No, I'm not going to belittle that pitch-pine. Years of usage had modified its yellowness, and it took to our rubbing with a marvelous furniture polish. The floors could have been better. The wood was hard, however, and we got some sort of a wax shine on them. The Shakespeare furniture plus rugs and brasses—and candle light—made a home than which we have never since had better. Never mind if the dining-room was dark. Never mind if we had to sleep in our study, and study in our bedroom. Never mind if Scrappie's nursery was the salon, cabinet de travail and chambre à coucher combined. Never mind if we were compelled to take our baths at the foot of our bed in a tin basin. It was Paris, our dream city.

We were fully installed by six o'clock. The femme de ménage volunteered to stay with Christine while we went out for supper. Before finding a restaurant, we climbed the north tower of Saint-Sulpice. Between us and the mass of verdure that marked the Jardin du Luxembourg was our home. Up there near heaven, with the city at our feet, we danced the Merry Widow Waltz, for sheer joy that we had a home of our own in Paris.

CHAPTER VII
GOLD IN THE CHIMNEY

HOW can two young people, with a baby and three hundred dollars in cash, able to count upon a one-year fellowship yielding six hundred dollars, live a year in Paris? The answer to that question is that it cannot be done. But we were not in the position to answer it that way. We were in Paris, and we had the baby. Pride and ambition are factors that refuse to be overruled by the remorseless logic of figures. If you put a proposition down on paper, you can prove that almost anything you want to do is impossible. Successful undertakings are never the result of logical thinking. Herbert and I would not have had a wedding at all if we had thought the matter out and had considered the financial side of life.

Herbert was keeping, however, some prejudices and some prudent reserves, remembering his father's caution that life has a financial basis. Sitting there on the packing-case we had picked out for a coal-box in our study-bedroom, he hauled out an account-book and was fussing over a missing franc. Our first year was one of constant change of scene, and we had not "kept house." Now, declared my husband, was the time to turn over a new leaf. If we knew where and how our money went, financing the proposition would be easier. With tears in my eyes and biting a pencil with trembling lips, I rebelled. I could not get interested in that missing franc.

"I want you to realize now, once for all, that I'm not going to keep this old cash account. I don't believe in worrying about money. I'm not going to worry about money and neither are you. There are only three financial questions: (1) how much money is there? (2) how long is it going to last? (3) what are we going to do when it's all gone? Two follows one, and three follows two—one, two, three—just like that!"

I was laughing now, and raised three fingers successively under my boss's nose.

"As long as we are in one, we are not in two; and when we are in two, we have not reached three. Let us wait for three until we are in three, or at least until we know we are about to leave two."