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“Jimski–this floor oiled, and the rug laid cross-wise! And old tapestry papers from Fredericks! And the spindle-chair and Fanny’s clock in the hall!”

“And the davenport in the dining-room, Anne,–there’s no room in here, and your tea-table at the fireplace, with your copper blazer on it!”

“Oh, Jim, we’ll have a place people will talk about!” Anne would sigh happily, after one of these outbursts. And when they made their last inspection before really coming to take possession of the cottage, she came very close to him,–Anne was several inches shorter than her big husband-to-be, and when she got as close as this to Jim she had to tip her serious little face up quite far, which Jim found attractive,–and said, in a little, breathless voice:

“It’s going to be like a home from the very start, isn’t it, Jim? And aren’t you glad, Jim, that we aren’t doing EXACTLY what every one else does, that you and I, who ARE a little different, Jim, are going to KEEP a little different? I mean that you really did do unusual work at college, and you really are of a fine family, and I am a Pendeering, and have travelled a lot, and been through Vassar,–don’t you know, Jim? You don’t think it’s conceited for us to think we aren’t quite the usual type, just between ourselves? Do you?”

Jim implied wordlessly that he did not. And whatever Jim thought himself, he was quite sincere in saying that he believed Anne to be peerless among her kind.

So they came to Jackson Street, and Anne made it quite as quaint and charming as her dreams. For a year they could not find a flaw in it.

Then little enchanting James Junior came, nick-named Diego for convenience, who fitted so perfectly into the picture, with his checked gingham, and his mop of yellow hair. Anne gallantly went on with her little informal luncheons and dinners, but she had to apologize for an untrained maid now, and interrupt these festivities with flying visits to the crib in the big bedroom that opened out of the dining-room. And then, very soon after Diego, Virginia was born–surely the most radiant, laughing baby that ever brought her joyous little presence into any home anywhere. But with Virginia’s coming, life grew very practical for Anne, very different from what it had been in her vague hopes and plans of years ago.

The cottage was no longer quite comfortable, to begin with. The garden, shadowed heavily by buildings on both sides, was undeniably damp, and the fascinating railing of the little balconies was undeniably mouldy. The bath-room, despite its delightful size, and the ivy that rapped outside its window, was not a modern bath-room. The backyard, once sacred to geraniums and grass, and odd pots of shrubs, was sunny for the children’s playing, to be sure, but no longer picturesque after their sturdy little boots had trampled it down, and with lines of their little clothes intersecting it. Anne began to think seriously of the big apartments all about, hitherto regarded as enemies, but perhaps the solution, after all. The modern flats were delightfully airy, high up in the sun, their floors were hard-wood, their bath-rooms tiled, their kitchens all tempting enamel, and nickel plate, and shining new wood. One had gas to cook with, furnace heat, hall service, and the joy of the lift.

“What if we do have to endure a dining-room with red paper and black woodwork, Jim,” she would say, “and have near-Tiffany shades and a hall two feet square? It would be so COMFORTABLE!”

But if Jim agreed,–“we’ll have a look at some of them on Sunday,” Anne would hesitate.

“They’re so horribly commonplace; they’re just what every one else has!” she would mourn.

Commonplace,–Anne said the word over to herself sometimes, in the long hours that she spent alone with the children. That was what her life had become. The inescapable daily routine left her no time for unnecessary prettiness. She met each day bravely, only to find herself beaten and exhausted every night. It was puzzling, it was sometimes a little depressing. Anne reflected that she had always been busy, she was indeed a little dynamo of energy, her college years and the years of travel had been crowded with interests and enterprises. But she had never been tired before; she had never felt, as she felt now, that she could fall asleep at the dinner table for sheer weariness, and that no trial was more difficult to bear than Jim’s cheerful announcement that the Deanes might be in later for a call, or the Weavers wanted them to come over for a game of bridge.