"And don't care," said Mrs. Lively with spirit. "Any other child in the city would go to the door and find out what it means; but you! much you care to save your mother's feet!" Gathering her ball of worsted with the crocheting in her left hand, she swept out of the room and through the hall to the front door. She pulled this open. There stood a man with hammer in hand.
"No harm to ye's, marm," he said. "I's jist afther puttin' a bill on ye's door; for shure it's to be sowld, that the house is."
"Sold!" cried Mrs. Lively. "When?"
"Faith! whiniver it may please a body to buy it," was the definite reply.
Mrs. Lively read the bill: "'Six thousand dollars!' Why the whole property isn't worth six thousand, much less the lease for twelve years. Won't the owner take less?"
"It's more than likely he would, 'specially from the likes of ye's. Shure! folks most ginerly wants all they kin git, and ef they can't git it they'll be afther takin' less. The gintleman says as it must be sold immadiate, for the owner is bruck to smitherations."
Here was prospective trouble. Mrs. Lively went down the doorsteps and along the paved walk to her husband's office, in the front basement. The doctor laid down his pen, expecting a patient, but, seeing that it was only his wife, resumed it.
"There's a bill put up on our door: the house is for sale—six thousand dollars. I'll warrant it could be got for five: I think it's worth six, though. We may have to move out at a day's notice, and we've just had this office newly papered, and the kitchen repainted, and, dear me! just got those Brussels carpets down in the parlors. It's too provoking! I know those carpets'll have to be cut and slashed into ribbons to make them fit other rooms. I was afraid of that when I got them. Until you own a house we oughtn't to get anything nice. But, oh dear! if I waited till we owned a home, I should go down to my grave on a two-ply. But where in the name of reason are we going? There isn't another vacant house in this neighborhood that I'd live in. And just think of the damage to your practice in moving your office! What are we going to do? Why in the world don't you say something? Can't you suggest something? One would think you hadn't any interest in the matter. But it's always the way. I've had to do all the planning for this family ever since I came into it, and I came into it before it was a family. Oh, you needn't smile: I know you're thinking that I haven't given you a chance to say anything; but I wouldn't talk if you'd talk, and I wouldn't bother myself about our arrangements if you would. It's too provoking about this house. It just suits me: there isn't a thing about it I should wish to have altered."
"Closets, little kitchen, back stairs," said Napoleon, who had entered the office unobserved, and who had often heard his mother denounce the house as most inconvenient in these three particulars.
"What have you come for?" the mother demanded sharply. "Go back to the sitting-room, and learn your geography lesson for to-morrow."