the trunk. "You are fagged
out. Peter, will you stop looking murderous and listen to me? How much
did it cost the three of us to live in this abode of virtue?"

It was simple addition. The total was rather appalling.

"I thought so. Now this is my plan. It may not be conventional, but it
will be respectable enough to satisfy anybody. And it will be cheaper,
I'm sure of that: We are all going out to the hunting-lodge of Maria
Theresa, and Harmony shall keep house for us!"

CHAPTER IX

It was the middle of November when Anna Gates, sitting on her trunk in
the cold entrance hall on the Hirschengasse, flung the conversational
bomb that left empty three rooms in the Pension Schwarz.

Mid-December found Harmony back and fully established in the lodge of
Maria Theresa on the Street of Seven Stars--back, but with a difference.
True, the gate still swung back and forward on rusty hinges, obedient to
every whim of the December gales; but the casement windows in the salon
no longer creaked or admitted drafts, thanks to Peter and a roll of
rubber weather-casing. The grand piano, which had been Scatchy's rented
extravagance, had gone never to return, and in its corner stood a
battered but still usable upright. Under the great chandelier sat a
table with an oil lamp, and evening and morning the white-tiled stove
gleamed warm with fire. On the table by the lamp were the combined
medical books of Peter and Anna Gates, and an ash-tray which also they
used in common.

Shabby still, of course, bare, almost denuded, the salon of Maria
Theresa. But at night, with the lamp lighted and the little door of the
stove open, and perhaps, when the dishes from supper had been washed,
with Harmony playing softly, it took resolution on Peter's part to
put on his overcoat and face a lecture on the resection of a rib or a
discussion of the function of the pituitary body.

The new arrangement had proved itself in more ways than one not only
greater in comfort, but in economy. Food was amazingly cheap. Coal,
which had cost ninety Hellers a bucket at the Pension Schwarz, they
bought in quantity and could afford to use lavishly. Oil for the lamp
was a trifle. They dined on venison now and then, when the shop across
boasted a deer from the mountains. They had other game occasionally,
when Peter, carrying home a mysterious package, would make them guess
what it might contain. Always on such occasions Harmony guessed rabbits.
She knew how to cook