tion.

As for the Precious Ones, they galloped about, demanding that we should
buy everything in sight, with a total disregard of our requirements or
resources.

It was wonderful though how cheap everything seemed, and how much we
seemed to need, even for a beginning. It was also wonderful how those
insidious figures told in the final settlement.

Let it be understood, I cherish no resentment toward the salesmen.
Reflecting now on the matter, I am, on the whole, grateful. They found
out where we were from, and where we were going to live, and they sold
us accordingly.

I think we interested them, and that they rather liked us. If not, I am
sure they would have sold us worse things and more of them. They could
have done so, easily. Hence my gratitude to the salesmen; but the man at
the transfer desk remains unforgiven.

I am satisfied, now, that he was an unscrupulous person, a perjured,
case-hardened creature whom it is every man's duty to destroy. But at
the time he seemed the very embodiment of good intentions.

He assured us heartily, as he gave us our change, that we should have
immediate delivery. We had explained at some length that this was
important, and why. He waved us off with the assurance that we need give
ourselves no uneasiness in the matter--that, in all probability, the
matting we had purchased as a floor basis would be there before we were.

He knew that this would start us post-haste for our apartment, which it
did. We even ran, waving and shouting, after a particular car when
another just like it was less than a half block behind.

We breathed more easily when we arrived at our new address and found
that we were in good season. When five minutes more had passed, however,
and still no signs of our matting, a vague uneasiness began to manifest
itself.

It was early and there was plenty of time, of course; but there was
something about the countless delivery wagons that passed and re-passed
without stopping which impressed us with the littleness of our
importance in this great whirl of traffic, and the ease with which a
transfer clerk's promise, easily and cheerfully made, might be as easily
and as cheerfully forgotten.

I said presently that I would go around the corner and order coal for
the range, ice for the refrigerator, and groceries for us all. I added
that the things from down town would surely be there on my return, and
that any way I wanted to learn where the nearest markets were.