"Really, I think lemonade would be nicer—and just a few sandwiches and coffee and ice cream, and——" The dream trailed off into a weary sigh that is the closest approach a real lady ever makes to a snore.
Well, it happened. They came by twos and threes, and I toted chairs and camp stools from the house the three long blocks to the grove. At first we made conversation with the children—Eleanor and Catherine—and then our intellectual dean, observing a Catholic institution nearby, correctly surmised by its mansard slate roof that it was built before the eighties; it was built in '72. With such mental diversions we killed time until the managing editor arrived and started a game of duck on the rock, at which the city editor skinned his shoulder. We ran races, and the littlest copy reader's legs twinkled with joy over the rough course. The girls jumped rope and screamed, and it was altogether kid-dish. Then we ate ham and roast beef sandwiches and drank coffee and cooled our æsophagi with ice cream and cake chasers. Our member with the porcupine summit insisted upon singing, and the stenographer played all the popular things. We gathered at the reservoir, while two of the men and the healthiest girl ran a marathon around that long mile, and she finished beautifully. Then we sat on the porch and had our pictures taken by flashlight.
Somebody burgled That House and moved the parlor furniture and piano into the dining-room and the dining-room stuff into the parlor. A merry wit tacked attachments to our houses, the managing editor put an "Open for Inspection" sign on the city editor's castle and some one stuck a "For Rent" placard on ours. And then they began leaving, by twos and threes, and the telephone girl was one of the last to go, lingeringly.
We slept that night—slept the sleep of the properly weary. All sorts of dreams romped through the long stillness and entertained us. The Duke of Mont Alto was in one of mine, and he was telling me something about taxes and water rent. But before his conversation got disagreeable I was awakened by a racket on the roof.
There's a fool woodpecker that comes there every morning at six o'clock and tries to drill through the slate. He's after a nest. It must be hard work. But if he ever gets through I know how he'll feel. He will have hustled some, but it will have been worth while. Anything is worth while, friend, if the goal is a nest of your own, where you can have your friends out and nobody can tell you to keep off the grass or wipe your feet on the mat—excepting your wife!
Not at all apropo of The House, there's a thought I want to get out of my system. What a lot of braggarts we men are, anyhow—and what a queer old world it is! There are two classes of people in the world—those who are doing something worth while and those who are trying to steal the credit. A modest little hen two or three doors away laid an egg, and in very few words cackled the event; but you ought to have heard that insufferable rooster! The moment the thing happened he strutted around with his chest out, yelling at the top of his voice, drowning out the whole poultry yard: "Ur-r-r-r, Ur-r-r-r, Ur-r-r-r! I'm the daddy of another egg!" How much more decent it would have been had he quietly stood by, preserving his dignity and judicial calm.
Now we'll get back to the story.
I'm sifting top soil to make our garden right, and my wife is doing wonderful things inside the house with the furniture and fixings. Every day she turns me around three times and shows me something new—something marvelous of her handiwork, immensely flattering to me since it justifies my judgment in the selection of a helpmeet. Every day the business of buying the house looks more possible and less of a financial mountain. Why, I can even afford to joke with the Duke, who asked me what I intended to plant in our front garden against the porch.
"I think," I said, "I'll plant a nice little row of mortgage vines and let 'em grow up and crawl all over the house. A mortgage vine, Duke, has flowers on it all the year round, and it's the most homelike thing I know."