t way to her?
I doubt it. Now and then, though, I catch her watchin' me sort of
puzzled.

So there's nothing steady goin' or settled about us yet, thanks be. Home
ain't a place to yawn in. Not ours. We don't get all our excitement out
of changin' the furniture round, either. Oh, sure, we do that, too. You
know, we're startin' in with a ready-made home--a studio apartment that
Mr. Robert picked up for me at a bargain, all furnished.

He was a near-artist, if you remember, this Waddy Crane party, who'd had
a bale of coupon-bearin' certificates willed to him, and what was a
van-load of furniture more or less to him? Course, I'm no judge of such
junk, but Vee seems to think we've got something swell.

"Just look at this noble old davenport, will you!" says she. "Isn't it a
beauty? And that highboy! Real old San Domingo mahogany that is, with
perfectly lovely crotch veneer in the panels. See?"

"Uh-huh," says I.

"And this four-poster with the pineapple tops and the canopy," she goes
on. "Pure Colonial, a hundred years old."

"Eh?" says I, gazin' at it doubtful. "Course, I was lookin' for
second-hand stuff, but I don't think he ought to work off anything that
ancient on me, do you?"

"Silly!" says Vee. "It's a gem, and the older the better."

"We'll need some new rugs, won't we," says I, "in place of some of these
faded things?"

"Faded!" says Vee. "Why, those are Bokharas. I will say for Mr. Crane
that he has good taste. This is furnished so much better than most
studios--nothing useless, no mixing of periods."

"Oh, when I go out after a home," says I, "I'm some grand little
shopper."

"Pooh!" says Vee. "Who couldn't do it the way you did? Why, the place
looks as if he'd just taken his hat and walked out. There are even
cigars in the humidor. And his easel and paints and brushes! Do you know
what I'm going to do, Torchy?"

"Put pink and green stripes around the cigars, I expect," says I.

"Smarty!" says she. "I'm going to paint pictures."

"Why not?" says I. "There's no law against it, and here you got all the
tools."

"You know I used to try it a little," says she. "I took quite a lot of
lessons."

"Then go to it," says I. "I'll get a yearly rate from a pressing club
to keep the spots off me. I'll bet you could do swell pictures."

"I know!" says Vee, clappin' her hands. "I'll begin with a portrait of
you. Let me try sketching in your head now."

That's the way Vee generally goes at things--with a