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“Strange that the cars are not here!” said Mr. Plunket, who had put himself in going order. “It’s nearly half an hour past the time now. Oh, dear! confound all this moving, say I.”

“That’s a strange way for you to talk before children, Mr. Plunket,” retorted his wife.

“And this is a much stranger way for you to act, madam; for ever dragging your husband and children about from post to pillar. For my part, I feel like Noah’s dove, without a place to rest the sole of my foot.”

“Mr. Plunket!”

“Mrs. Plunket!”

A war of words was about commencing, but the furniture-cars drove up at the moment, when an armistice took place.

In due time, the family of the Plunkets were, bag and baggage, in their new house. A lover of quiet, the male head of the establishment tried to refrain from any remarks calculated to excite his helpmate, but this was next to impossible, there being so much in the new house that he could not, in conscience, approve. If Mrs. Plunket would have kept quiet, all might have gone on very smoothly; but Mrs. Plunket could not or would not keep quiet. She was extravagant in her praise of every thing, and incessant in her comparisons between the old and the new house. Mr. Plunket listened, and bit his lip to keep silent. At last the lady said to him, with a coaxing smile, for she was not going to rest until some words of approval were extorted from her liege lord–“Now, Mr. Plunket, don’t you think this a love of a house?”

“No!” was the gruff answer.

“Mr. Plunket! Why, what is your objection? I’m sure we can’t be more uncomfortable than we have been for a year.”

“Oh, yes, we can.”

“How so?”

“There is such a thing as going from the frying-pan into the fire.”

“Mr. Plunket!”

“Just what you’ll find we have done, madam.”

“How will you make that appear, pray?”

“In a few words. Just step this way. Do you see that building?”

“I do.”

“Just to the south-west of us; from that quarter the cool breezes of summer come. We shall now have them fragrant with the delightful exhalations of a slaughter-house. Humph! Won’t that be delightful? Then, again, the house is damp.”

“Oh, no. The landlord assured me it was as dry as a bone.”

“The landlord lied, then. I’ve been from garret to cellar half a dozen times, and it is just as I say. My eyes never deceive me. As to its being a better or more comfortable house, that is all in my eye. I wouldn’t give as much for it, by fifty dollars, as for the one we have left.”

Notwithstanding Mrs. Plunket’s efforts to induce her husband to praise the house, she was not as well satisfied with it as she was at the first inspection of the premises.

“I’m sure,” she replied, in rather a subdued manner, “that it is quite as good as the old house, and has many advantages over it.”

“Name one,” said her husband.

“It is not overrun with vermin.”

“Wait a while and see.”

“Oh, I know it isn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked the landlord particularly.”

“And he said no?”

“He did.”

“Humph! We shall see.”

And they did see. Tired but with a day’s moving and fixing, the whole family, feeling hungry, out of humour, and uncomfortable, descended to the kitchen, after it had become dark, to overhaul the provision-baskets, and get a cold cut of some kind. But, alas! to their dismay, it was found that another family, and that a numerous one, already had possession. Floor, dresser, and walls were alive with a starving colony of enormous cockroaches, and the baskets, into which bread, meats, etc. had been packed, were literally swarming with them.

In horror, man, woman, and child beat a hasty retreat, and left the premises.

It would hardly be fair to record all the sayings and doings of that eventful evening. Overwearied in body and mind, the family retired to rest, but some of them, alas! not to sleep. From washboards and every other part of the chamber in which a crevice existed, crept out certain little animals not always to be mentioned to ears polite, and, more bold than the denizens of the kitchen, made immediate demonstrations on the persons of master, mistress, child, and maid.

It took less than a week to prove satisfactorily to Mrs. Plunket, though she did not admit the fact, that the new house was not to be compared with the old one in any respect. It had not a single advantage over the other, while the disadvantages were felt by every member of the family.

In a few months, however, Mr. Plunket began to feel at home, and to settle down into contentment, but as he grew better and better satisfied, his wife grew more and more desirous of change, and is now, as the year begins to draw to a close, looking about her for bills on houses, and examining, every day, the “to let” department of the newspapers with a lively degree of interest. Mr. Plunket will, probably, resist stoutly when this lady proposes some new “love of a house,” but it will be of no use; he will have to pull up stakes and try it again. It is his destiny; he has got a moving wife, and there is no help for him.