"I too, George."
"And that, my dear, we shall never get rid of; we not only must adopt and assume the responsibility, but must pass it down to our children and our children's children."
"Oh, George, it is terrible—terrible! What are we going to do?"
"My darling Clara, we are going to put a piece of bric-à-brac a day on the newel post, buy a litter of puppies to chew up the rugs, select a butter-fingered, china-breaking waitress, pay storage on the silver and try occasionally to set fire to the furniture."
"But the flat silver, George, what of that?"
"Oh, the flat silver," I said gloomily, "each one has his cross to bear, that shall be ours."
[a/]
III
We were, as has been suggested, a relatively rich couple. That's a pun! At the end of five years a relative on either side left us a graceful reminder. The problem of living became merely one of degree. At the end of this period we had made considerable progress in the building up of a home which should be in fact and desire entirely ours. That is, we had been extensively fortunate in the preservation of our wedding presents. Our twenty-second housemaid broke a bottle of ink over the parlor rug, her twenty-one predecessors (whom I had particularly selected) had already made the most gratifying progress among the bric-à-brac, two intelligent Airdale puppies had chewed satisfactory holes in the Art Nouveau furniture, even the Sistine Madonna had wrenched loose from its supports and considerately annihilated the jewel-studded Oriental lamp in the general smashup.