Chapter II: Part 2

But she was not quite idle, none-the-less. Junior had to have his morning bath, after breakfast, and while he was in the tub, his mother washed six bottles in the hand-basin. Then, on a tiltish alcohol stove, Nancy had to boil his barley for twenty endless minutes. When the stove upset there was an additional half-hour's hard work, but even when it did not, it was usually ten o'clock before she went down to the kitchen for his two quarts of milk. Then came the usual careful work with the "ouncer," and the six filled bottles were put into Nancy's own small ice-box, to which one of the maids was then supposed to bring a small piece of ice. The left-over milk was taken back to the kitchen, and Nancy washed the little saucepan in her hand-basin, and put away stove and barley. By this time Junior was ready for another bottle, and when he went to sleep his mother went down to the laundry with an arm-full of small garments.

There was no other way. Labour was scarce in the village, and Nancy could get no one of the housemaids to take upon herself this daily task. Women from the outside were not allowed in the hotel laundry, and so the task fell naturally to the baby's mother. She assumed it gladly, but when the line of snowy linen was blowing free in the summer wind, and the cake of soap had been put on its special rafter, and the tubs were draining, Nancy usually went up to her bedroom, tiptoeing in because of the sleeper, and flung herself down for a heavy nap.

After luncheon she gathered in her linen and watched by the wideawake baby. Then they went down to the cool shade by the creek, and Junior threw stones, and splashed fat hands in the shallows, and his mother watched him adoringly. It never entered her head that she was anything but privileged to be able to slave for him. He was always and supremely worth while. Nancy's only terrors were that something would happen to rob her of the honour. She wanted no other company; Junior was her world, except when Saturday's noon train brought Bert. She told her husband, and meant it, that she was too happy; they did not need the world.

But sometimes the world intruded, and turned Nancy's hard-won philosophy to ashes. She did not want to be idle, and she did not want to be rich, but when she saw women younger than herself, in no visible way inferior, who were both, her calm was shattered for a time.

One day she and Bert wheeled the boy, in his small cart, down a pleasant unfamiliar roadway, and across a rustic bridge, and, smiling over their adventure, found themselves close to a low, wide-spreading Colonial house, with striped awnings shading its wide porches, and girls and men in white grouped about a dozen tea-tables. Tennis courts were near by, and several motor-cars stood beside the pebbled drive.

A gray-uniformed attendant came to them, civilly. Did they wish to see some member of the club! "Oh, it is a club then," Bert asked, a little too carelessly. "It is the Silver River Country Club, sir."

"Oh, well, we'll get out of here, then," Bert said good naturedly, as he turned the perambulator on the gravel under a hundred casual eyes. He and Nancy chatted quite naturally about their mistake, as they re-crossed the rustic bridge, and went up the unfamiliar roadway again. But a cloud lay over them for the rest of that day, and that night Nancy said:

"What must one have--or be--to belong to a thing like that, Bert?"

"To--oh, that club?" Bert answered, "Oh, it isn't so much. A hundred initiation, and a hundred a year, I suppose."

"We could do that--some year," Nancy predicted.

"Well, it isn't only that. There's no use joining a country club," Bert said musingly, "unless you can do the thing decently. It means signing checks for tea, and cocktails, and keeping a car, and the Lord knows what! It means tennis rackets and golf sticks and tips and playing bridge for a stake. It all counts up!"

"Where do all those people get the money?" Nancy asked resentfully. "They looked common, to me!"

"We'll get there, never you fret!" Bert answered vaguely. But long after he was asleep his wife lay awake in the hot hotel bedroom, and thought darkly of fate. She came of gentle stock, and she would meet her lot bravely, but oh, how she longed for ease, for a little luxury, for coolness and darkness and silence and service, for frothy laces and the touch of silk!

Lights came up from the lawn before the hotel. It was Sunday night, and the young people were making the most of the precious week-end. Nancy heard a clock somewhere strike ten, and then the single stroke for the half-hour. She got up and sat beside the window; the night was insufferably close, with not a breath of air.

Junior sighed; his mother arose, stricken, and lighted a shaded lamp. Half-past-ten and she had forgotten his bottle!

When she carried it over to him, he was wide awake, his face sober, his aureole of bright hair damp with the heat. But at the sight of his playfellow his four new teeth came suddenly into sight. Here was "Mugger," the unfailing solace and cheer of his life. He gave her a beatific smile, and seized the bottle with a rapturous "glug." Bert was roused by her laughter, and the soft sound of kisses.

Chapter Nine

When the second boy came, in early December the Bradleys decided to move. They moved into a plain, old-fashioned flat, with two enormous rooms, two medium-sized, and two small ones, in an unfashionable street, and in a rather inaccessible block. There was a drug store at the corner opposite them, but the park was only a long block away, and the back rooms were flooded with sunshine. Nancy had only two flights of stairs to climb, instead of four, and plenty of room for the two cribs and the high chair. Also she had room for Elite, the coloured girl who put herself at the Bradleys' disposal for three dollars a week. Elite knew nothing whatever, but she had willing hands and willing feet. She had the sudden laugh of a maniac, but she held some strange power over the Bradley babies and they obeyed her lightest word.

They moved on the day after Christmas, when Edward Barrett Bradley was only three weeks old. Elite and Bert did the moving, and Nancy only laughed weakly at their experiences. Junior contracted chicken-pox during this time, and the family was quarantined on New Year's Eve.

Bert and his wife celebrated the occasion with a quart of oysters, eaten with hat-pins from a quart measure. The invalid slumbered in the same room, behind a screen. He was having a very light attack, and Nancy, who had been hanging over him all day, was reassured to-night, and in wild spirits. She laughed the tears into her eyes when Albert Senior, hearing the tentative horns at nine o'clock, telephoned the fish market for the wherewithal to celebrate. Bert had been hanging pictures, and was dirty and tired, but they got quite hysterical with merriment over their feast. The "new boy," as they called the baby, presently was brought in, and had his own meal, before the old-fashioned coal fire. Nancy sat dreaming over the small curved form.

"We'll think this is very funny, some day!" she said, dauntlessly.

Bert merely looked at her. But after a while he tried to tell her what he thought about it, and so made their third New Year memorable to her forever.

She settled down quickly, in the new quarters; some visionary, romancing phase of Nancy's character and Nancy's roses disappeared for a time. She baked and boiled, sewed on buttons, bandaged fingers, rose gallantly to the days' demands. She learned the economical value of soups and salads, and schooled herself, at least every other day, to leave the boys for an hour or two with Elite, and walk out for a little bracing solitude. Bert watched her in admiring amazement. His wife was a wonder!

Sometimes, on a cold afternoon, she walked down to meet Bert, and they went together to dinner. Their talk was practical now, of suits and rubber overshoes and milk bills. And Nancy was too tired to walk home; they went home in the rubber-scented dampness of a surface car.

Sometimes, as she went through the morning routine, the baths, bottles, dishes, the picking up, the disheartening conferences over the ice box, she wondered what had become of the old southern belle, Nancy Barrett, who had laughed and flirted and only a few years ago, who had been such a strong and pretty and confident egotist? There was no egotism left in Nancy now, she was only a busy woman in a world of busy women. She knew backache and headache, and moods of weary irritation. The cut of her gowns, the little niceties of table-service or of children's clothing no longer concerned her. She merely wanted her family comfortable, fed and housed and clothed, and well. Nancy could advise other women about the capable handling of children, before her firstborn was three years old.

They never went to "The Old Hill House" again, but they found a primitive but comfortable hotel in the Maine woods, for Ned's second summer, and for several summers after that. Here Nancy slept and tramped and rested happily, welcoming Bert rapturously every week-end. In near-by cabins, young matrons like herself were likewise solving the children's summer problem, she was never lonely, and the eight free, pine-scented weeks were cloudlessly happy. She told Bert that it was the only sensible solution for persons in moderate circumstances; old clothes, simple food, utter solitude.

"There are no comparisons to spoil things," Nancy said, contentedly. "I know I'm small-minded, Bert. But seeing things I can't have does upset me, somehow!"

Chapter Ten

Nevertheless, she accepted the invitation that came from Bert's cousin Dorothy, one autumn, for a week-end visit. Dorothy had married now, and had a baby. She was living in a rented "place," up near Rhinecliff, she wrote, and she wanted to see something of Cousin Bert.

Neither Bert nor Nancy could afterward remember exactly why they went. It was partly curiosity, perhaps; partly the strong lure exerted by Dorothy's casual intimation that "the car" would come for them, and that this particular week-end was "the big dance, at the club." Bert chanced to have a new suit, and Nancy had a charming blue taffeta that seemed to her good enough for any place or anybody.

The boys were asked, but they did not take them. Ned was almost two now, and Junior past three, and they behaved beautifully with Hannah, the quiet old Danish woman who had been with them since they came back from the woods, the year before. Nancy, full of excited anticipation, packed her suit-case daintily, and fluttered downstairs as happily as a girl, when a hundredth glance at the street showed the waiting motor at last.

Hawkes was the chauffeur. "To Mr. Bradley's office please, Hawkes," said Nancy. She could not think of anything friendly to say to him, as they wheeled through the streets. Bert kept them waiting, and once or twice she said "I can't think what's delaying Mr. Bradley." But Hawkes did not answer.

Presently Bert came out and greeted Nancy and Hawkes.

"But I thought Mrs. Benchley was coming into town to-day," Bert said. Dorothy was now Mrs. George Benchley. Hawkes spoke at last. "An old friend of Mrs. Benchley has unexpectedly arrived this morning, sir, and she has changed her mind." "Oh, all right," said Bert, grinning at Nancy as the pleasant drive began.

It was all wonderful; the bright autumn sunshine, the sense of freedom and leisure in the early afternoon, and the lovely roads they followed. Bert however, seemed to be thinking of his sons, and asked of them more than once. And Nancy could not rid herself of an uncomfortable suspicion that whoever Dorothy's old friend was, she had changed Dorothy's plans, and perhaps made the coming of the Bradleys untimely. Now and then husband and wife smiled at each other and said "This is fun!"

Dorothy's "place" was a beautiful estate, heavily wooded, wound with white driveways, and equipped with its own tennis courts, and its boathouse on the river. The house was enormous, and naturally had assumed none of the personality of its occupants, in this casual summer tenancy. There were countless rooms, all filled with tables and chairs and rugs and desks and bowls of flowers; and several maids came and went in the interest of the comfort of the house. There were seven or eight other guests besides the Bradleys, and they all seemed to know each other well. The unexpected guest was a young Mrs. Catlin affectionately mentioned by Dorothy in every other breath as "Elaine"; she and Dorothy had been taken to Europe together, after their schooldays, and had formed an intimacy then.

Dorothy came into the big hall to meet her cousin and his wife, and, with a little laugh, kissed Bert. She looked particularly young and lovely in what Nancy supposed to be a carefully-selected costume; later she realized that all Dorothy's clothes gave this impression. She said that the baby was out, when Nancy asked for him, and that Katharine would take care of them.

Katharine, an impassive maid, led them upstairs, and to the large room in which their suit cases already stood. Dorothy had said, "After you change, come down and have something to drink!" but Nancy had nothing prettier than the taffeta, except her evening gown, and as the sunshine was streaming into the room, she could not change to that. So she merely freshened her appearance, and wasted fifteen or twenty minutes in a close inspection of the room, before they went down. To her somewhat shy question Bert responded enthusiastically, "You look lovely!"

They went through empty open rooms, talking as naturally as they could, and smilingly joined the others on the porch. Tea and other drinks were being dispensed by Elaine, whose attention was meanwhile absorbed by two young men. Dorothy, lying almost flat in a wicker chair, with her small silk-shod ankles crossed, was lazily arguing some question of golf scores.

She introduced the new-comers, and as Bert, somewhat more at home in his cousin's house than his wife was, fell into conversation with the middle-aged man nearest him, Dorothy dutifully addressed herself to Nancy. They spoke of Bert's mother, and of Boston, and Dorothy asked Nancy if she liked tennis--or golfing--or yachting? There was to be quite a large dance at the club to-night, and an entertainment before it.

"Isn't Dorothy a wonder, Mrs. Bradley?" asked Elaine. "She's going to have twenty people to dinner, she runs this big house, she's got a baby not yet six months old, and she looks about sixteen!"

"You must have wonderful maids," suggested Nancy, smiling.

"I have!" said Dorothy amusedly, "They're crazy about me--I don't know why, because I work them like dogs. But of course we're away a lot, and then they always have parties," she added, "and they run things pretty much to suit themselves. But we have good meals, don't we, Elaine?" she asked, childishly.

"Heavenly!" said Elaine. Nancy, trying to appear brightly sympathetic, smiled again.

But she and Bert dressed for dinner almost silently, an hour later. It was all delightful and luxurious, truly, and they were most considerately and hospitably accepted by the entire establishment. But something was wrong. Nancy did not know what it was, and she did not want to risk a mere childish outburst, so easily construed into jealousy. Perhaps it WAS jealousy.

She found herself arguing, as she dressed. This sort of thing was not LIFE, after all. The quiet wife of an obscure man, rejoicing in her home and her children, had a thousand times more real pleasure. These well-dressed idle people didn't count, after all. ...

"Sort of nice of Dorothy to send Hawkes in for us," Bert said; "Did you hear her explain that she thought we'd be more comfortable with Hawkes, so she and Mrs. Catlin kept the younger man?"

"Considerate!" Nancy said, lifelessly.

"Isn't it a wonder she isn't spoiled?" Bert pursued.

"Really it is!"

"Benchley looks like an ass," Bert conceded. "But he's not so bad. He's in the firm now, you know, and Dorothy was just telling me that he's taken hold wonderfully."

"Isn't that nice?" Nancy said, mildly. She was struggling with her hair, which entirely refused to frame her face in its usual rich waves, and lay flat or split into unexpected partings despite her repeated efforts. "How's that now, Bert?" she asked, turning toward him with an arrangement half-completed.

"Well--that's all RIGHT--" he began uncertainly. Nancy, dropping the brown strands, and tossing the whole hot mass free, felt that she could burst into tears.

Chapter Eleven

The dinner was an ordeal; her partner was unfortunately interested only in motor-cars, of which Nancy could find little that was intelligent to say. She felt like what she was, a humble relative out of her element. After dinner they were all packed into cars, and swept to the club.

Darkness and the sound of a comedian's voice in monologue warned them as they entered that the entertainment was begun; after much whispering, laughing and stumbling however, they were piloted to chairs, and for perhaps an hour and a half Nancy was quite alone, and much entertained. Then the lights went up, and the crowd surged noisily to and fro.

She lost sight of Bert, but was duly introduced to new people; and they spoke of the successful entertainment, and of the club-house. Nancy danced only once or twice, and until almost two o'clock sat talking, principally with a pleasant old lady, who had a daughter to chaperon.

Then the first departures began, and Nancy had a merry good-night from Dorothy, called over the latter's powdered shoulder as she danced, and went home. She was silent, as she undressed, but Bert, yawning, said that he had had a good time. He said that Dorothy had urged them to stay until Monday morning, but he did not see how he could make it. He hated to get started late at the office Monday morning. Nancy eagerly agreed.

"You do feel so?" he asked, in satisfaction. "Well, that settles it, then! We'll go home to-morrow."

And home they did go, on the following afternoon. Nancy, counting the hours, nevertheless enjoyed the delicious breakfast, when she had quite a spirited chat with one or two of the men guests, who were the only ones to appear. Then she and Bert walked into the village to church, and wandering happily home, were met by Dorothy in the car, and whirled to the club. Here the pleasant morning air was perfumed with strong cigars already, and while Bert played nine holes of golf, and covered himself with glory, Nancy won five rubbers of bridge, and gained the respect of Dorothy and Elaine at the same time. She was more like her spontaneous self at luncheon than at any other time during the visit, and driving home, agreed with Bert that, when you got to know them, Dorothy's set was not so bad!

"Her baby is frightfully ugly, but that doesn't matter so much, with a boy," said Nancy. "And I don't think that a woman like Elaine is so rude as she is stupid. They simply can't see anything else but their way of thinking, and dressing, and talking, and so they stare at you as if you were a Hottentot! I had a nice time, especially to-day--but never again!"

"Dorothy never did have any particular beau," Bert observed, "She just likes to dress in those little silky, stripy things, and have everyone praising her, all the time. She'll ask us again, sometime, when she remembers us."

Chapter Twelve

But it was almost a year before Dorothy thought of her cousins again, and then the proud Nancy wrote her that the arrival of Anne Bradley was daily expected, and no plans could be made at present. Anne duly came, a rose of a baby, and Nancy said that luck came with her.

Certainly Anne was less than a week old when Bert told his wife that old Souchard, whose annoying personality had darkened all Bert's office days, had retired, gone back to Paris! And Bert was head man, "in the field." His salary was not what Souchard's had been, naturally, but the sixty dollars would be doubled, some weeks, by commissions; there would be lots of commissions, now! Now they could save, announced Nancy.

But they did not save. They moved again, to a pleasanter apartment, and Hannah did washing and cooking, and Grace came, to help with the children. Nancy began to make calls again, and had the children's pictures taken, for Grandmother Bradley, and sometimes gave luncheons, with cards to follow. She and Bert could go to the theatre again, and, if it was raining, could come home in a taxicab.

It was a modest life, even with all this prosperity. Nancy had still enough to do, mending piled up, marketing grew more complicated, and on alternate Thursdays and Sundays she herself had to fill Hannah's place, or Grace's place. They began to think that life would be simpler in the country, and instead of taking the children to the parks, as was their happy Sunday custom, they went now to Jersey, to Westchester, and to Staten Island.

The houses they passed, hundreds and hundreds of them, filled them with enthusiasm. Sunday was a pleasant day, in the suburbs. The youngsters, everywhere, were in white--frolicking about open garage doors, bareheaded on their bicycles, barefooted beside beaches or streams. Their mothers, also white-clad, were busy with agreeable pursuits--gathering roses, or settling babies for naps in shaded hammocks. Lawn mowers clicked in the hands of the white-clad men, or a group of young householders gathered for tennis, or for consultation about a motor-car.

Nancy and Bert began to tentatively ask about rents, to calculate coal and commutation tickets. The humblest little country house, with rank neglected grass about it, and a kitchen odorous of new paint and old drains, held a strange charm for them.

"They could LIVE out-of-doors!" said Nancy, of the children. "And I want their memories to be sweet, to be homelike and natural. The city really isn't the place for children!"

"I'd like it!" Bert said, for like most men he was simple in his tastes, and a vision of himself and his sons cutting grass, picking tomatoes and watering gooseberry bushes had a certain appeal. "I'd like to have the Cutters out for a week-end!" he suggested. Nancy smiled a little mechanically. She did not like Amy Cutter.

"And we could ask the Featherstones!" she remembered suddenly.

"Gosh! Joe Featherstone is the limit!" Bert said, mildly.

"Well, however!" Nancy concluded, hastily, "We COULD have people out, that's the main thing!"

Chapter Thirteen

For a year or two the Bradleys kept up these Sunday expeditions without accomplishing anything definite. But they accomplished a great amount of indirect happiness, ate a hundred picnic lunches, and accumulated ten times that many amusing, and inspiring, and pleasant, recollections. Bert carried the lovely Anne; Nancy had the thermos bottle and Anne's requirements in a small suit-case; and the boys had a neat cardboard box of lunch apiece.

And then some months after their seventh anniversary, Bert sold the Witcher Place.

This was the most important financial event of their lives. The Witcher Place had been so long in the hands of Bert's firm for sale that it had become a household word in the Bradley family, and in other families. Nobody ever expected to pocket the handsome commission that the owner and the firm between them had placed upon the deal, and to Nancy the thing was only a myth until a certain autumn Sunday, when she and Bert and the children were roaming about the Jersey hills, and stumbled upon the place.

There it was; the decaying mansion, the neglected avenue and garden, the acres and acres of idle orchard and field. The faded signposts identified it, "Apply to the Estate of Eliot Witcher."

"Bert, this isn't the Witcher Place!" exclaimed his wife.

Bert was as interested as she. They pushed open the old gate, and ate their luncheon that day sitting on the lawn, under the elms that the first Eliot Witcher had planted a hundred years ago. The children ran wild over the garden, Anne took her nap on the leaf-strewn side porch.

"Bert--they never want two hundred thousand dollars for just this!"

Bert threw away his cigar, and flung himself luxuriously down for a nap.

"They'll get it, Nance. Somebody'll develop a real estate deal here some day. They must have a hundred acres here. You'll see it--'Witcher Park' or 'Witcher Manor.' The old chap who inherited it is as rich as Croesus, he was in the office the other day, he wants to sell.--Hello! I was in the office--garden--and so I said--if you please--"

Bert was going to sleep. His wife laughed sympathetically as the staggering words stopped, and deep and regular breathing took their place. She sat on in the afternoon sunlight, looking dreamily about her, and trying to picture life here a hundred years ago; the gracious young mistress of the new mansion, the ringlets and pantalettes, the Revolutionary War still well remembered, and the last George on the throne. And now the house was cold and dead, and strange little boys, in sandals and sturdy galatea, were shouting in the stable.

Perhaps she was drowsy herself; she started awake, and touched Bert. An old man and a young man had come in the opened gate, and were speaking to her.

"I beg your pardon!" It was the young man. "But--but do you own this place?"

"No--just picnicking!" said Bert, wide awake.

"But it is for sale?" asked the old man. Bert got up, and brushed the leaves from his clothes, and the three men walked down the drive together. Nancy, half-comprehending, all-hoping looked after them. She saw Bert give the young man his card, and glance at the same time at the faded sign, as if he appealed to it to confirm his claim.

She hardly dared speak when he came back. Anne awoke, and the boys must be summoned for the home trip. Bert moved dreamily, he seemed dazed. Only once did he speak of the Witcher Place that night, and then it was to say:

"Perry--that's that old chap's name--said that he would be in this week, at the office. I'll bet he doesn't come."

"No, I don't suppose he will," Nancy said.

"I impressed it on his son that it meant--something, to me, to have him ask for me, if he DID come," said Bert, then.

"Bert, you'd better skip lunches, this week," Nancy suggested thoughtfully.

"I will--that's a good idea," he said. She noticed that he was more than usually gentle and helpful with the children, that night. Nancy felt his strain, and her own, and went through Monday sick with suspense.

"Nothing doing!" said Bert cheerfully, coming in on Monday evening. Tuesday went by--Wednesday went by. On Thursday Nancy had an especially nice dinner, because Bert's mother had come down, for a few days' visit. The two women were good friends, and Nancy was never so capable, brisk, and busy as when these sharp but approving eyes were upon her.

The elder Mrs. Bradley approved of the children heartily, and boasted about them and their clever mother when she went home. Bert's wife was so careful as to manners, so sensible about food and clothes, such a wonderful manager.

To-night Anne was in her grandmother's lap, commandingly directing the reading of a fairy-story. Whenever the plot seemed thin to Anne she threw in a casual demand for additional lions, dragons or giants, as her fancy dictated. Mrs. Bradley giving Nancy a tremendously amused and sympathetic smile, supplied these horrors duly, and the boys, supposedly eating their suppers at one end of the dining-room table, alternately laughed at Anne and agonized with her.

Nancy was superintending the boys, the elderly woman had a comfortable chair by the fire, and Hannah was slowly and ponderously setting the table. It was a pretty scene for Bert's eyes to find, as he came in, and he gave his mother and his wife a more than usually affectionate greeting.

Nancy followed him into their room, taking Anne. She was pleased that the children had been so sweet with their grandmother, pleased that her deep dish pie had come out so well, happy to be cosy and safe at home while the last heavy rains of October battened at the windows.

She had lowered Anne, already undressed, into her crib when Bert suddenly drew her away, and tipped up her face with his hand under her chin, and stared into her surprised eyes.

"Well, old girl, I got it! It was all settled inside of twenty minutes, at five o'clock!"

"The--? But Bert---I don't understand--" Nancy stammered. And then suddenly, with a rush of awed delight, "Bert Bradley! Not the Witcher Place!"

"Yep!" Bert answered briefly. "He took it. It's all settled."

Chapter Fourteen

So the Bradleys had a bank account. And even before the precious money was actually paid them, and deposited in the bank, Nancy knew what they were going to do with it. There was only one sensible thing for young persons who were raising a family on a small salary to do. They must buy a country home.

No more city, no more rent-paying for Nancy and Bert. The bank account had just five figures. Nancy and Bert said that they could buy a lovely home anywhere for nine thousand, and have a whole thousand left for furniture and incidentals. They could begin to live!

A week later they began their hunt, and all through the white winter and the lovely spring they hunted. They asked friends about it, and read magazines, and the advertisements in the Sunday papers.

Unfortunately, however, in all the Saturdays and the Sundays they spent hunting for their home, they never saw anything that cost just nine thousand dollars. There were hundreds of places that cost sixty-five hundred or seven thousand. After that prices made a clean leap to ten thousand, to twelve thousand, to fourteen--"No, it's no use our looking at those!" said the young Bradleys, sighing.

They learned a great deal about houses, and some of their dreams died young. It was no use, the agents told Nancy, to think about a pretty, shabby, old farm-house, for those had been snapped up. If she found one, it would be a foolish investment, because it probably would be surrounded by unrestricted property. Restrictions were great things, and all developments had them in large or small degree. There were developments that obliged the purchaser of land to submit his building plans to a committee, before he could build.

Nancy laughed that she shouldn't care for THAT. And when restrictions interfered with her plans she very vigorously opposed them. She told Bert that she would not consider places that did not allow fences, and chickens, and dogs, and all the other pleasant country things.

Sometimes, in an economical mood, the Bradleys looked at the six and seven thousand dollar bargains. It had to be admitted that some of them were extremely nice. Nice neighbourhoods, young trees set out along the street--trees about the size of carriage whips--nice sunny bathroom, nice bedrooms--"we could change these papers," Nancy always said--good kitchen and closets, gas all ready to connect, and an open fireplace in the dining room. And so back to the front hall again, and to a rather blank moment when the agent obviously expected a definite decision, and the Bradleys felt unable to make it.

"What don't you like about the place?" the agent would ask.

"Well--" Bert would flounder. "I don't know. I'll talk it over with my wife!"

"Better decide to take it, Mr. Bradley," the agent, whoever he was, would urge seriously, "We're selling these places awfully fast, and when they're gone you won't find anything else like them. It's only because this chap that's been holding this property suddenly--"

"Yes, I know, you told me about his dropping dead," Bert would hastily remind him. "Well--I'll see. I'll let you know. Come on, kids!"

And the Bradley family would walk away, not too hastily, but without looking back.

"I don't know--but it was so like all the others," Nancy would complain, "It was so utterly commonplace! Now there, Bert, right in the village street, with the trees, is a lovely place, marked 'For Sale.' Do let's just pass it!"

"Darling girl, you couldn't touch that for twenty thousand. Right there by the track, too!"

"But it looks so homelike!"

"That old barn in the back looks sort of odd to me; they've got a sort of livery stable there in the back, Nance, you couldn't stand that!"

"No." Nancy's tone and manner would droop, she would go slowly by, discouraged and tired until another week end.

Chapter Fifteen

One day Bert told Nancy that a man named Rogers had been in the office, and had been telling him about a place called Marlborough Gardens. Usually Bert's firm did not touch anything small enough to interest him as a home, but in this case the whole development was involved, and the obliging Mr. Rogers chanced to mention to Bert that he had some bargains down there at the Gardens.

"There's nothing in it for him, you understand?" said Bert to his wife, "But he's an awfully decent fellow, and he got interested. I told him about what we'd been doing, and he roared. He says that we're to come down Sunday, and see what he's got, and if we don't like it he can at any rate give us some dope about the rest of the places."

"And where is it, Bert?"

"It's down on the Sound side of Long Island, thirty-seven minutes out of town, right on the water."

"Oh, Bert, it sounds wonderful?"

"He says that it's the most amazing thing that ever has been put on the market. He says that Morgan and Rockefeller both have put money into it, on the quiet."

"Well, if they can risk their little all, we can take a chance!" giggled Nancy.

"Of course that isn't generally known," Bert warned her, "but it just goes to show you that it's a BIG THING. He was telling me about this feller that had a gorgeous home just built there, and his wife's mother gets ill, and they all move to California. He said I could look at it, and that it would speak for itself."

"Did he say whether there were any trees?"

"He said this particular place had wonderful trees."

"And what's the price, Bee?"

Bert knew that this was his weak point.

"He didn't say, old girl."

Nancy looked rueful, her castle in the dust.

"Oh, BERT! It may be something awful!"

"No, it won't, for I'd just been telling him what we were looking at, don't you see!"

"Oh, that so?" Nancy was relieved. "But it will be the first thing _I_ ask him," she predicted.

Chapter Sixteen

However, on Sunday she forgot to ask him. The circumstances were so unexpectedly pleasant as to banish from her head any pre-arranged plan of procedure. It was a glowing June day, soft, perfumed, and breezy. The Bradleys went to Butler's Hill, which was "our station," as Nancy said, and there the agent met them, with a car. He drove them himself the short mile from the railroad to Marlborough Gardens.

"Isn't it one of those frightfully smart developments?" Nancy asked, smiling uneasily.

"It's considered the finest home development on Long Island," the agent admitted readily, "The place I'm going to show you--I'm going to show you two or three--but the special place I want to show you, was built for a HOME. There isn't a finer building anywhere. Lansing, the man who built it, was a splendid fellow, with a lovely wife--lovely woman. But her mother lives in California, and she got to worrying--"

"Mr. Bradley told me," Nancy said sympathetically.

"Homes, and home-makers," pursued the agent, "That's what we need. The people we have here are all quiet, home-loving folks, we don't want show, we don't want display--"

"Well, that's our idea!" Bert approved. And he rather vexed his inconsistent wife by adding hardily, "Remember that my top figure is ten thousand, Rogers, will you?"

"Now, you wait and see what I have to show you, and then we'll talk turkey," the other man said goodnaturedly. Anne, sitting on her mother's lap beside him, gave him a sudden smile at the word she recognized.

He wheeled the car smoothly through the great gates of cement, looped with iron chains, that shut off the village herd from the sacred ground. Nancy gave Bert an ecstatic glance; this was wonderful! The scattered homes were all beautiful, all different. Some were actual mansions, with wide-spreading wings and half a dozen chimneys, but some were small and homelike, etched with the stretching fingers of new vines, and surrounded by park-like gardens. Even about the empty plots hedges had been planted, and underbrush raked away, and the effect was indescribably trim and orderly, "like England," said Nancy, who had never seen England.

As they slowly circled about, they caught glimpses of tennis courts, beyond the lawns and trees, glimpses of the blue water of the bay, glimpses of white, curving driveways. Here a shining motor-car stood purring, there men in white paused with arrested rackets, to glance up at the strangers from their tennis. Nancy looked at Bert and Bert at Nancy, and their eyes confessed that never in all the months of hunting had they seen anything like THIS!

Presently they came to the end of the road, and to a richly wooded plot that formed a corner to the whole tract. A garden had been planted, but it was neglected now, and weeds had pushed up here and there between the bricks of the path. The house was low and spreading, under great locust and elm trees, a shingled brown house, with two red chimneys and cottage casements. Over one hedge the Bradleys looked down at the pebbled beach that belonged to all the residents of Marlborough Gardens.

"Lansing called this place 'Holly Court,'" said the agent, leading them to the front porch door, to which he skillfully fitted a key, "That big holly bush there gave it its name; the bush is probably fifty years old. Step in, Mrs. Bradley!"

"But notice the lovely Dutch door first, Bert," Nancy said eagerly. "See, Anne! On a hot day you can have it half open and half shut, isn't that cunning?"

"The house is full of charming touches," Mr. Rogers said, "And you may always trust a woman's eye to find them, Mr. Bradley! Women are natural home-makers. My wife'll often surprise me; 'Why, you've not got half enough closets, Paul,' she'll say. There's one open fire-place, Mrs. Bradley, in your reception hall. You see the whole plan of the house is informal. You've got another fire-place in the dining room, and one in the master bedroom upstairs. Here's a room they used as a den--bookshelves, and so on, and then beyond is another tiled porch--very convenient for breakfast, or tea. You see Lansing lived here; never has been rented, or anything like that. He's selling it for practically what it cost him!"

"And what's that?" asked Bert, smiling, but not quite at his ease.

"Now, you wait a few minutes, Mr. Business Man!" Mr. Rogers said, "What you think, and what I think, doesn't count much beside what this little lady thinks. She's got to live in the house, and if SHE likes it, why I guess you and I can come to terms!"

Nancy threw her husband a glance full of all amused tolerance at this, but in her secret soul she rather liked it.

They went upstairs, where there were hardwood floors, and two bathrooms, and mirrors in the bathroom doors. There was another bathroom in the attic, and a fourth upstairs in the garage, with two small bedrooms in each place. They must expect us to keep four maids, Nancy hastily computed.

There was an upstair porch; "To shake a rug, Mrs. Bradley, or to dry your hair, or for this young lady's supper," said the delightful Mr. Rogers. A back stairway led down to tempting culinary regions; a sharp exclamation burst from Nancy at the sight of the great ice box, and the tiled sinks.

They walked about the plot, a large one. At the back, beside the garage, they could look over a small but healthy hedge to more beach, clustered with unusual shells at low tide, and the straggling outskirts of the village. From the front, they looked straight down a wide tree-shaded street, that lost itself in a peaceful vista of great trees and vine-smothered stone walls. "Holly Court" was quiet, it was naturally isolated, it seemed to Nancy already like home.

Even now, however, Mr. Rogers would not talk terms. He drove them about again, passing other houses, all happily and prosperously occupied. He told Nancy about this family and that.

"What'd that house cost?" Bert would demand.

"Ah well, THAT. That belongs to Ingram, of the Ingram Thorn Coal people, you know. I suppose Mr. Ingram has invested forty or fifty thousand dollars in that place, in one way and another. The tennis court--"

And so on and on. Presently they passed the pretty, unpretentious club-house, built close to the water. A few light sails were dipping and shaking on the bay, children were gathered in a little knot beside an upturned canoe, on the shore. Several cars were parked on the drive outside the club, and Nancy felt decidedly self-conscious as she and Bert and the children walked onto the awninged porch that was the tea room.

"Now this club belongs to the place," Mr. Rogers said, "You're buying here--and I don't mind telling you, Mr. Bradley, that I want you to buy here," he broke off to admit persuasively--"because you and your wife are the sort of people we need here. You won't find anything anywhere that is backed by the same interest, you won't. However, about the club. Your buying here makes you a member of this club----"

"Oh, is that SO!" Nancy exclaimed, in delighted surprise.

"Oh, yes," said the agent. "The dues are merely nominal--for the upkeep of the place."

"Of course!" said the Bradleys.

"Your dues entitle you to all the privileges of the club--I believe the bathhouses are a little extra, but everything else is yours. You can bring a friend here to tea, give a card party here--there are dances and dinners all winter long."

"Mother, are we coming here to live?" asked Junior, over his chocolate.

"I don't know," Nancy answered, feeling that she could cry with nervousness. She hardly tasted her tea, she hardly saw the men and women that drifted to and fro. Her heart was choking her with hope and fear, and she knew that Bert was nervous, too.

At last Mr. Rogers returned to the subject of "Holly Court," he wanted to know first what they thought of it. Oh, it was perfect, said Nancy and Bert together. It was just what they wanted, only-- Good, the agent said. He went on to say that he would have bought the house himself, but that his wife's father had an old home in Flushing, and while the old gentleman lived, he wanted them there. But he belonged to the Marlborough Gardens Club, and kept a boat there. Now, he had been authorized to put a special price on this place of Lansings, and he was going to tell them frankly why. They knew as well as he did that a hundred foot square plot, and trees like that, so near the water, COST MONEY. He digressed to tell them just how property had soared in price, during even his own time.

"The truth is," he said, "that Lansing, when he picked that site, picked it for trees, and quiet, and view--it didn't make any difference to him that it was a corner site, and a little out of the main traffic----"

"But I LIKE that about it!" Nancy said eagerly. "I love the isolation and the quiet. Nobody will bother us there----"

Bert saw that she was already moving in. He turned a rather anxious look from her to the agent.

Chapter Seventeen

Twenty-five thousand. It was out at last, falling like a stone on the Bradleys' hearts. Nancy could hardly keep the bitter tears from her eyes. Bert, more hardy, barked out a short laugh. "I'm a fool to let it go," said the agent frankly; "I'm all tied up with other things. But I have no hesitation in saying this; you buy it, put the garden in shape, sit tight for a few years, and I'll turn it over for you for forty thousand, and throw in my commission!"

"Nix!" said Bert, honestly, "Nothing stirring! It's too big a proposition for us, we couldn't swing it. It may be all you say, but I'm raising a family; I can't go into twenty-five-thousand-dollar deals--"

"I don't see why--" began the agent, unruffled.

"I do!" Bert interrupted him, cheerfully.

"Now look here, Mr. Bradley," said Mr. Rogers, patiently. "Let's get the real dope on this thing. You want a home. You don't want a contract-made, cheaply constructed place in some community that your wife and children will outgrow before they're five years older! Now, here you get a place that every year is going to improve. There isn't so much of this Sound shore that is lying around waiting to be bought. I can show you----"

"Nothing stirring, I tell you!" Bert repeated, "Don't hand me out a lot of dope about it. I can see for myself what it is, I like it, the Missus likes it, it's a dandy proposition--for a millionaire. But I couldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole!"

Nancy's lip began to tremble. She was tired, and somehow--somehow it all seemed such a waste, if they weren't to have it! She busied herself untying Anne's napkin, and sent the three children on a gingerly tour of inspection down to the beach.

"Now listen a moment!" Mr. Rogers said. And Nancy added gently, almost tremulously:

"Do just LISTEN to him, Bert!"

"You pay rent, don't you?" began Mr. Rogers, "Sixty, you said? That's seven hundred and twenty dollars a year, and you have nothing to show for it! But you'd consider seventy-five or a hundred cheap enough for a place like this wouldn't you?"

"I could go--a hundred, yes," Bert admitted, clearing his throat.

"You don't HAVE to go any hundred," the agent said, triumphantly. "And besides that, isn't it to your advantage to live in your own house, and have a home that you can be proud of, and pay everything over your interest toward your mortgage? We have people here who only paid two or three thousand down, we don't push you--that isn't our idea. If you can't meet our terms, we'll meet yours. You've got your nest-egg, whatever it is----"

"As a matter of fact, I've got ten thousand to start with," Bert said slowly. "But that's all I have got, Rogers," he added firmly, "And I don't propose----"

"You've GOT ten thousand?" asked the agent, with a kindly smile. And immediately his vehemence gave way to a sort of benign amusement. "Why, my dear boy," he said genially, "What's the matter with you? There's a mortgage of twelve thousand on that place now; you pay your ten, and 6 per cent, on the rest--that's something a little more than sixty dollars a month--and then you clear off your loan, or not, as suits you! I don't have to tell you that that's good business. How much of the holdings of Pearsall and Pearsall are clear of mortgages! We carry 'em on every inch of our land, right to the hilt too. If you're getting the equivalent of 8 or 9 per cent, on your money, you should worry about the man that carries the loan. You're paying 6 per cent, on somebody's twelve thousand now, don't forget that..."

Chapter Eighteen

An hour later they went to see Holly Court again. It was even lovelier than ever in the sweet spring twilight. Triangles of soft light lay upon its dusty, yet polished, floors. Bert said that the place certainly needed precious little furniture; Nancy added eagerly that one maid could do all the work. She drew a happy sketch of Bert and his friends, arriving hot and weary from the city, on summer afternoons, going down to the bay for a plunge, and coming back to find supper spread on the red-tiled porch. Bert liked the idea of winter fires, with snow and darkness outside and firelight and warmth within, and the Bradleys' friends driving up jolly and cold for an hour's talk, and a cup of tea.

"What do you think, dear?" said Bert to his wife, very low, when the agent had considerately withdrawn for a few minutes, and they could confer. "Think!" repeated Nancy, in delicate reproach, "Why, I suppose there is only one thing to think, Bert!"

"You--you like it, then?" he asked, a little nervously. "Of course, it's a corking place, and all that. And, as Rogers says, with what we have we could swing it easily. You see dear, I pay ten thousand, and take up twelve thousand more as a mortgage. Even then there's three thousand--"

Nancy looked despair.

"But that could be covered by a second mortgage," he reminded her, quickly. "That's a very ordinary thing. Everyone does that. Rogers will fix it up for me."

"Really, Bert?" she asked doubtfully.

"Oh, certainly! We do it every day, in the office. However, we've got to think this thing over seriously. It's twice--in fact, it's more than twice what we said. There's the interest on the mortgage, and the cost of the move, and my commutation, and club dues. Then of course, living's a little higher--there are no shops, just telephone service, the shops are in the village."

"But think of car fares--and how simply the children can dress," Nancy countered quickly. "And if they have all outdoors to play in, why, I could let Anna go, and just send out the laundry!"

"Well, we could think it over----" Bert began uncomfortably, but she cut him short. They had been standing beside one of the windows, and looking out at the soft twilight under the trees; now Nancy turned to her husband a pale, tense face, and rather bright eyes.

"Albert," said she, quickly and breathlessly, "if I could have a home like this I'd manage somehow! You've been saying we could have a nurse to help with the children--but I'd have one servant all my life--I'd do my own work! To have our friends down here--to have the children grow up in these surroundings--to have that club to go to--! We're not building for this year, or next year, dear. We've got the children's future to think of. Mind, I'm not trying to influence you, Bert," said Nancy, her eager tone changing suddenly to a flat, repressed voice, "You are the best judge, of course, and whatever you decide will be right. But I merely think that this is the loveliest place I ever saw in my life, and exactly what we've been hunting for--only far, far nicer!--and that if we can't have it we'd simply better give up house-hunting, because it's a mere waste of time, and resign ourselves to living in that detestable city for ever and ever! Of course to go on as we are going on, means no friends and no real home life for the children, everyone admits that the city is NO PLACE FOR CHILDREN, and another thing, we'll never find anything like this again! But you do as you think best. Only I--that's what I feel, if you ask me."

And having talked the colour into her cheeks, and the tears into her eyes, Nancy turned her back upon her husband, and looked out into the garden again.

Chapter Nineteen

That same week Bert brought home the deeds, and put them down on the dinner table before her. Nancy usually started the meal promptly at half past six, so that the children's first raging appetites might be partly assuaged; bread was buttered, milk poured, bibs tied, and all the excitement of commencing the meal abated when Bert came in. It was far from being the ideal arrangement, both parents admitted that, but like a great many other abridgements and changes in the domestic routine, it worked. The rule was that no one was to interrupt Dad until he had talked a little to Mother, and had his soup, and this worked well, too. It was while the soup-plates were going out that Bert usually lifted his daughter bodily into his arms, and paid some little attention to his sons.