They were staying at her mother’s on the Heights, pending the purchase or erection of the new house. Mrs. Arburton had advanced this happy thought of having two homes at the breakfast table. The idea pleased her mother greatly, and she remarked to her son-in-law that, in her opinion, it was an excellent arrangement. She would gladly live in the uptown house and take care of it while they were spending the week in the other house down by the river.
“My love, we must do it. We never need move anything, for you could keep a suit of clothes in each house. I’m sure I shall never be happy to live down on the riverside. There’s really nobody living there, and still I never, never can be happy if you are not able to come home to lunch.”
Young Mr. Arburton quite agreed with his wife and her mother. It would be very desirable to live on the bluff, two hundred feet above the river, and very desirable to live immediately below, down by the boat landing and near the office. It would be very convenient to live in two places at the same time. How to do it was the problem.
Immediately after breakfast young Mr. Arburton started off to business. To reach the lower level of the city, where his office and his great lumber yards stood close by the river, and almost immediately under the lofty bluff on which the new or upper town was built, he was obliged to take a trolley car that slid swiftly down a long iron viaduct or inclined plane. There had been at one time, before the days of the trolley, a more direct, but much slower method of reaching the lower town. This was a sort of huge hoist or elevator, upon which the horse-cars were slowly dragged up and down by means of a cable. At present, this route was seldom used, as it was, in the opinion of the general public, altogether too dilatory transit.
Business was quiet that day, and Mr. Arburton had ample opportunity to consider the problem of keeping house in two places at the same time. He felt sure he must gratify his wife’s natural desire to live in town, and he was equally sure he must reside in the immediate neighborhood of his yard and its great interests. It was very like the ancient question as to what would happen if a body, moving with perfectly irresistible momentum, were to meet a perfectly immovable body.
He returned home that night quite radiant. He had solved the question.
“It is all right, my love. It can be done.”
“Oh! I felt sure you would see that my idea was admirable. Which house shall you build first—the one on the Heights or the house down by the river?”
“Both can be built at the same time.”
“Well, dear, of course, you see the house up here in this fashionable quarter must lie much larger and nicer than the house down by those horrid lumber yards. I shan’t mind if the lower house is a plain little box. No one will ever call there, and any simple, inexpensive, wooden cottage will answer. Besides, while we are staying down there I shall not receive at all, and I shall have my cards marked with our uptown address.”