The House

"There, Reuben, is just the place for us!" I agreed entirely with this proposition. The house stood back a goodly distance from the street upon a prominence t

to herself the pleasing sight of little Josephine and little

spect our new home. It seems that that very morning, worn out with waiting and inflamed by a determination to do Now or to perish in the attempt, Alice had sallied forth in quest of the precious game. She had gone directly

ir baby, and a small dog. Mrs. Schmittheimer herself lived and moved and had her being in the second story, doing her own cooking and other housework, her only companion being her faithful omnipresent cat, the sex of which (I state this for a reason which will hereinafter transpire) was feminine. Although the good

lars for the property under discussion, but the prevalence of hard times and the persuasive eloquence of my dear diplomatic Alice induced the late Mr. Schmittheimer's relict to cons

terest. In five years there are sixty months. and in that time we shall have paid for this place four thousand dollars, which is but four hundred dollars more than

tell you right here that my

the a word about this to anybody until all the papers h

ore intimate of our neighbors; the Baylors, the Rushes and the Tiltmans had had experienc

t and reach the ears of the real-estate dealers, and then we should be hopelessly lost. Our n

ness man in our city; the consequence is that in the administration of affairs in the Denslow household you meet with that conservative happy medium which is beautiful to contemplate. Alice was right; our precious secret would be secure with the Denslows. In fact the Denslow

f secrecy upon me. I would not for all the wealth of the Indies live over again the awful four hours which followed my solemn promise to Alice not to reveal the blissful tidings that we had bought

rst me into fragments, which would now be travelling around aimlessly in space, like the lost Pleiad, or like the dismembered and stray tail of a comet. So I called my next neighbor, Rush, out behind his barn, and, under

ction, too, in being assured by each of those dear neighbors that we (Alice and I) had got the greatest bargain ever heard of, that we were the luckiest couple on earth, that the old Sch

the exuberance of her fancy she portrayed winding gravel walks among rose bushes and beds of gay flowers; rustic bowers over which honeysuckle and ivy clambered; picturesque miniature Swiss cottages in the trees for bir

rior women had it definitely settled what the color of the window shades was to be and just how many brass-headed tacks would be required to fasten down the new Japanese rug with which it was proposed to adorn the hardwood floor of the library in the first story of "the addition" which had already been determined upon. But Mrs. Denslow was no more prolific of lovely suggestions than was Alice's widowed sister Adah, who has made her home with us for the last

ht us to remodel the old Schmittheimer "rookery"-that is what she dared to call it-into a villa! And when she was made to understand by means of numerous long and earnest representations

And at the present time they are as dear to each other as of yore. Adah presupposes that everybody else knows who Maria is, and so everybody is regaled perennially with Adah's loyal tributes t

heard Adah say: "Alice, do you know I 've been thinking about it all the morning, and I do

eems to be no way of puttin

tern of a sleeve, upon which, with infinite pains, she had traced certain lines with

, amiably; "but that wou

hen she made her house over," said Adah

ot going to spoil a good hall by building any skimpy little closets! That room will d

e it a rule never to interpose in other people's disagreements. I will admit, howev