o hours from the moment of purchase, was
the last thing to arrive. This on the fourth day--or was it the fifth? I
was too mad by this time to remember dates. What I do recall is that we
laid it ourselves. We had not, as yet, paid for the laying, and we said
that rather than give that shameless firm another dollar we would lay
that matting if it killed us.

Morally it did. I have never been quite the same man since that terrible
experience. The Little Woman helped stretch, and held the lamp, while I
pounded my thumb and swore. She said she had never realized until that
night how well and satisfactorily I could swear. It seemed to comfort
her and she abetted it.

I know now that the stripes on matting never match. We didn't know it
then, and we tried to make them. We pulled and hauled, and I got down on
my stomach, with one ear against the wall, and burned the other one on
the lamp chimney which the Little Woman, in her anxiety to help, held
too close. When I criticised her inclination to overdo matters, she
observed that I would probably be able to pull the matting along more
easily if I wouldn't lie down on the piece I was trying to pull. Then we
both said some things that I suppose we shall regret to our dying day.
It was a terrible night. When morning came, grim and ghastly, life
seemed a failure, and I could feel that I had grown old.

But with breakfast and coffee and sunshine came renewed hope.

We were settled at last, and our little place looked clean and more like
a playhouse than ever.

Our acquaintance with the janitor was not, as yet, definite. I had met
her once or twice informally, it is true, but as yet we could not be
said to have reached any basis of understanding. As to her appearance,
she was brawny and Irish, with a forbidding countenance. She had a
husband whom we never saw--he being employed outside--but whose
personality, nevertheless, became a factor in our subsequent relations.

Somehow, we instinctively avoided the people below stairs, as cats do
canines, though we had no traditions concerning janitors, and we are
naturally the most friendly and democratic people in the world.

Matters went on very well for a time. We congratulated ourselves every
morning on how nice and handy everything was, now that we were once
settled, and laughed over our recent difficulties. The Precious Ones
were in their glory. They had appropriated the little four-by-six closet
back of the kitchen--it had been sh