on had cost about five times as much as all the rest of
our rugs put together would have been an unnecessary rashness on my
part. As it was, she came to it by degrees, and by degrees also she
realized that our other floor coverings were poor, base, and spurious.

Still I was prudent in my next selections. I bought two smaller pieces,
a Kazak strip, and a Beloochistan mat. This was really all we needed,
but a few days later a small piece of antique Bokhara overpowered me,
and I fell. I said it would be nice on the wall, and the Little Woman
confessed that it was, but again insisted that we would better stop now.
She little realized my condition. The small dark men in their dim-lit
Broadway cave had woven a spell about me that made the seductions of
antique furniture as a forgotten tale.

I bought a book on rug collecting, and I could not pass their
treasure-house without turning in. They had learned to know me from
afar, and the sound of my step was the signal for a horde of them to
come tumbling out from among the rugs.

It was the old story of Eastern magic. The spell of the Orient was upon
me, and in the language of my friends I went plunging down the _rug_ged
path to ruin. I added an Anatolian to my collections--a small one that I
could slip into the house without the Little Woman seeing it until it
was placed and in position to help me in my defense. It was the same
with a Bergama and a Coula, but by this time the Precious Ones would
come tearing out into the hall when I came home and then rush back,
calling as they ran: "Oh, mamma, he's got one and he's holding it behind
him! He's got another rug, mamma!"

So when I got the big Khiva I felt that some new tactics must be
adopted. In the first place, it would take two strong men to carry it,
and in the next place it would cover the parlor floor completely, and
meant the transferring to the walls of several former purchases.

Further than this, its addition would make the hole in the Sum big
enough to drive a wagon through--a band-wagon at that with a whole
circus procession behind it. Indeed, the remains of the Sum would be
merely fragmentary, so to speak, and only the glad Christmas season
could make it possible for me to confess and justify to the Little Woman
the fulness of the situation.

Luckily, Christmas was not far distant. The dark men agreed to hold the
big Khiva until the day before, and then deliver it to the janitor.
With the janitor's help I could