"Well," she went on, "that's my idea: a flat, with our meals. This would give me my chance to get away for a part of the summer—I'm sure I need it."
"Away for a part of the summer?"
"Yes. Mary Munson was saying something about my going to the White Mountains with her in July. They would do me good. Though perhaps the sea-shore might be better; plenty of those Down-east people are indebted to me now."
Another of those gauze veils was lifting. Married life was but a prolongation of girlhood, with all its associations and peregrinations. Where did the husband come in?
They left the house on the first of May. George recognized by this time the essential slightness and incapacity of his wife, and renounced the possibility of a home in any but a modified sense. Part of their goods were sacrificed at auction, part were stored at a rate that would have provided a home for a working-man's family, a few pieces were utilized in filling up a partly furnished flat, and the deserted house remained vacant through the summer. It was not until October that its ornate front and its tasteful decorations caught the eye of the right man, and by October a complication of interests had made a vacant house the very least of Ogden's concerns.
The place came under the consideration of the Floyds as soon as the intentions of the Ogdens became known. A decided change had come over Walworth's affairs; a less expensive house than his present one now seemed a great advantage. But his own lease ran for a year more; besides, his wife had too high an idea of their position and its dues to think of succeeding the young Ogdens in such a tenancy. The Floyds, as a matter of fact, were sinking to bed-rock-a foothold whose reality they had never tested yet; and there need be no wonder that the beginning of their downward course was marked by a slow reluctance. Walworth endeavored to make good the shortages occasioned through his brother's clippings by intrusting Ann with commissions on his behalf upon the Open Board—affairs in which she was no more successful for him than for herself; while his wife, for the first time, made some efforts in a society for which she had always had a shade of careless contempt.
The Ogdens established themselves anew in a large building where they had four or five, small rooms, and where they could breakfast and dine with a few hundred persons of like requirements and like situation. George now began renewed efforts to turn to account the property for which he had received deeds from McDowell. His halfyear of married life had put him in an awkward and straitened position, and the usual activity in real property that comes with the spring was something of which the utmost advantage must be taken.
He placed some of his outside acres with one or two good houses, but this entire side of business seemed pervaded by apathy.
"It's going to be an off-year," he was told. "Acres are down, and it looks as if they were going to stay so—for some time, anyway. We'll take this, though, and do what we can. You pay this year's taxes, of course?"
So much for the real estate. McDowell's notes, which he had made to run for a longer term than pleased anybody but himself, showed the due and prompt endorsement of interest payments; and if there was anything else in the general situation to call for gratulation Ogden failed to discover it.