Chapter Nineteen
That same week Bert brought home the deeds, and put them down on the dinner table before her. Nancy usually started the meal promptly at half past six, so that the children's first raging appetites might be partly assuaged; bread was buttered, milk poured, bibs tied, and all the excitement of commencing the meal abated when Bert came in. It was far from being the ideal arrangement, both parents admitted that, but like a great many other abridgements and changes in the domestic routine, it worked. The rule was that no one was to interrupt Dad until he had talked a little to Mother, and had his soup, and this worked well, too. It was while the soup-plates were going out that Bert usually lifted his daughter bodily into his arms, and paid some little attention to his sons.
But to-night he came rushing in like a boy, and the instant Nancy saw the cause of his excitement, she was up from her place, and as wild with pleasure as a girl. The deeds! The actual title to Holly Court! Then it was all right? It was all right! It was theirs. Nancy showed the stamped and ruled and folded paper to the children. Oh, she had been so much afraid that something would go wrong. She had been so worried.
Nothing else was talked of that night, or for many days and nights. Bert said that they might as well move at once, no use paying rent when you owned a place, and he and Nancy entered into delightful calculations as to the placing of rugs and tables and chairs. The things might come out of storage now—wouldn't the banjo clock and the pineapple bed look wonderful in Holly Court! The children rejoiced in the parental decision to go and see it again next Sunday, and take lunch this time, and be all by themselves, and really get to know the place.
Curiously, neither Nancy nor Bert could distinctly remember anything but its most obvious features, now. Just how the stairs came down into the pantry, and how the doors into the bedrooms opened, they were unable to remember. But it was perfection, they remembered that.
And on Sunday, as eager as the children, they went down to Marlborough Gardens again, to find it all lovelier and better than their memory of it. After that they went every Sunday until they moved, and Holly Court seemed to grow better and better. The school and county taxes were already paid, and the receipts given him, and there was no rent! Husband and wife, eyeing the dignified disposition of the furniture, the white crib in the big dressing room next to their own, the boys' narrow beds separated by strips of rug and neat little dressers, the spare room with the pineapple bed, and the blue scarfs lettered "Perugia—Perugia—Perugia"—looked into each other's eyes and said that they had done well.
Chapter Twenty
The rest of that summer, and the fall, were like an exquisite dream. All the Bradleys were well, and happier than their happiest dream. Nancy took the children swimming daily on the quiet, deserted beach just above the club grounds; on Saturdays and Sundays they all went swimming. She made her own bed every morning, and the children's beds, and she dusted the beautiful drawing room, and set the upper half of the Dutch door at a dozen angles, trying to decide which was the prettiest. She and Anne made a little ceremony of filling the vases with flowers, and the boys were obliged to keep the brick paths and the lawn clear of toys.
Nancy made a quiet boast in those days that they let the neighbours alone, and the neighbours let them alone. But she did meet one or two of the Marlborough Beach women, and liked them. And three times during the summer she and Bert asked city friends to visit them; times of pride and pleasure for the Bradleys. Their obvious prosperity, their handsome children, and the ideal home could not but send everyone away admiring. It was after the last of these visits that Bert told his wife that they ought to join the club.
"I don't quite understand that—don't we belong?" Nancy asked.