That House I Bought

FIFTH PERIOD

Buying a house when spring is young involves a lot of thought and anxiety, from which is developed a high nervous pressure. You alternate days of earnest application and enforced recuperation.

One begins to learn, too, how much he doesn't know.

Our yard, we found, was admirably adapted to quarry purposes, or would make an excellent clay bank. William told us he would level up the back lot and then put on a top soil and add a sort of compost of manure and loam, in which we could plant things. I reserved a square 18 by 25 feet for a patent wire pigeon fly.

"Why will you raise pigeons?" asked my wife.

"I will raise pigeons," I replied with dignity, "for their giblets. I love pigeon giblets. You may have the squibs."

"You mean squabs," said my wife.

"I said squibs," I insisted stanchly. "You should say squabs," suggested my wife mildly. "I will have squibs or nothing," I replied, as becoming master of the house, and squibs it was. So be it known, we are going to raise squibs.

"And I," said my wife, "shall raise a tomato. The back of the lot is in an all-day sun, and tomatoes thrive in the sun."

"And a turnip or two," I said. "If you plant a couple of turnips and let nature take its course, you'll have turnips all over the place. I've heard that turnips and belgian hares are noted for–"

"And sweet peas," said my wife, "I shall train them against the house."

"You cannot train a pea," I said scornfully. "You may train a pig, or a dog, but you cannot train a pea."

One of the reasons women may not vote is that they say just such foolish things as that! Train a pea, indeed! I would as lief try to train a doorknob!

With this little difficulty settled and out of the way, we made ready for serious work.

We were rather late getting into our gardening, but made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. With a piece of string and a few sticks, Yours Truly laid off a strip from the steps around the front porch to the side foundation; and then with a spade the same victim of circumstances broke his back in three places and wore two lovely blisters into the palms of his forepaws.

Uncle Henry got his foot into the soil with a spade which, peculiarly enough, was borrowed from one named Cain, who lives next door. That other Cain was the father of agricolists. Observe how history carries itself down the ages with consistency! And to complete the picture, observe me watering the earth with my sweat!

Who in thunder ever invented the scheme of hiding pieces of brick, broken concrete, can tops, chunks of wood and the wreck of dishes right where a fellow wants to dig a garden? I like a practical joke myself, but that is going too far. In taking off the top soil there was a reasonably clear thoroughfare, but when the heft of my hoof went against the heel of the spade for the first downward dash, it struck an impenetrable ambush of mason's findings.

To make it worse, my wife stood on the porch cheerfully lending her aid in the form of advice. The man who owned the spade sat comfortably on his own porch reading The Evening Sun, and now and then glancing over the top at me with an amused smile. William came along.

"Are you digging a garden?" he asked.

"No," I replied idiotically; "I am running a footrace with an angle-worm!"

The Duke of Mont Alto whizzed by in his automobile and waved his hand. He tooted twice. I think he was kidding me. A friend, wending homeward with his dinnerpail, paused to observe that it was hot weather for digging. That self-consciousness that makes the whole world miserable on occasion seized me. From every window I imagined delighted neighbors looking on; in the twitter of the birds I heard merry giggles.

But against and in spite of all these handicaps I persisted. I had as implements, in addition to Cain's spade—how I love that connection!—one table knife, one garden claw, one trowel, one sharp stick, one cracked hoe, and one perfectly good vocabulary. I went after the clay ground with my hands in preference to any or all of the tools, and after half an hour of agony had removed, by actual count, one hundred and thirty-seven large stones and a small pile of pebbles, none of the pebbles weighing more than one pound. Then with my hands I crumbled the dirt chunks into powder and carefully sifted, smoothed off, rolled, tumbled, and otherwise adjusted the net product.

Sweat is the fluid excreted from the sudoriferous glands of the skin.

The sudoriferous glands of Yours Truly worked overtime. Yours Truly excreted, exuded, flooded. To be swimming around in your own atmosphere is a novel and sometimes pleasurable experience. It's funny how a man bowls sixteen-ounce balls until his ribs crack and sits in a Turkish bath until each pore is a geyser, and yet when that same result is obtained by means of honest labor and by pushing a spade, he complains.

I cut the lines of this little front garden deep and clean, and sloped the pulverized earth back so that there would be a perpetual irrigation in the ditch from the overflow. Rather clever idea, that. Then my wife got out the dwarf nasturtium seeds and we put them in a box, and the box in the conservatory, and myself into the shower. I don't see how a farmer can get along without a shower in the house.

We had about six hundred nasturtium seeds in envelopes bearing totally misleading pictures of what they will look like. I filled a box with rough earth and then pulverized it with an ice-pick. Then I stuck holes with my finger and put one seed in each hole. After my fingernails had developed into a screaming argument for the use of soap, my wife discovered that I had planted them too deep.

"You'll have to take them all out and plant them again," she said.

I scratched my head, standing thoughtfully on one foot the while.

"I will not," I said. "I will just scrape an inch of dirt off the top!"

When it comes to inventing labor-saving devices, I'm a mental gatling.

Nothing happened to those nasturtium seeds for five days. On the morning of the fifth day I heard a scream from my wife and rushed downstairs, to find her leaning over the nasturtium box.

"Oooooeeee! Lookee!" she shrieked.

I looked.

Then I yelled. I grabbed her in both arms and danced around the conservatory like a plumb fool. Then we both ran back and leaned over the box, and raved. There were half a dozen little greenish-white stalks sticking out, each top curved over like a dear little ingrowing nail.

"Aren't they cute!" exclaimed my wife.

"Cute!" I said, in disgust. "Why, my dear, they're not cute—they're wonderful!"

I pushed the window up a little to give them air. My wife caught my arm excitedly and pulled it down again.

"You mustn't do that," she said; "you'll freeze the sprouts!"

"Sprouts," I said, "come on potatoes, onions, cabbages, and beets. These are not sprouts; they are bulbs!"

She said not a word, but got a book and showed me a picture of a bulb—a tulip bulb.

"That," she said, "is a bulb. These are sprouts."

If there's anything that makes home unhappy, it's that atmosphere of superiority in a woman. I tried to point out to her that she couldn't believe everything she saw in a book.

"History," I said, "is continually changing. That may have been a bulb at the time of publication, but–"

It was no use. I had to give in. She had the dots on Uncle Henry for sure, but you've got to give it to me—you've just got to. How was this one? Listen:

"Of course they're sprouts. I knew they were sprouts all the time. I was just trying to catch you."

SIXTH PERIOD

There are four little disconnected adventures in my notes that must find a place somewhere, and so I have decided to bunch them all in this chapter. If you'll draw your chair up closer, I'll give them to you in order:

First—The Adventure of the Prospective Tenant.

Second—The Adventure of the Mysterious Push Button.

Third—The Adventure of the Reluctant Cow.

Fourth—The Adventure of the Nasty Little Fat Robin.

Now for the Adventure of the Prospective Tenant.

The fact has been mentioned that we yearned to let our second floor of four beautiful rooms, private bath and shower, closet in every room, large plumbing, polished floors and heaven knows what. As a condition precedent to becoming a flatlord, I appealed to the populace through the want ad. My first copy ran like this:

3313 BATEMAN AVENUE, MONT ALTO—30 minutes from City Hall; four rooms and private hallway; bath with shower and spray, private; fine southern exposure two rooms; airy, ample windows; use of parlor, porch, piano and laundry; water-heated; Garrison avenue cars; beautiful neighborhood; splendid view of city and bay; no children; will give breakfast if desired; church within a block; nearest saloon three miles away, but very fast street cars to that point. Burglars shun neighborhood and nobody ever gets drunk.

There were other things I overlooked, but we decided to let it go at that. Certainly virtues had been mentioned which should overcome any prejudice against suburban life and the crickets. Blithely I passed the copy over the counter and inquired the cost. The man smiled.

"Why don't you make this a display ad. and get a seven-cent flat rate on a six months' contract?" he inquired.

I hate a sarcastic man with a pencil.

"If you don't like that," I said, "do it yourself!"

To make a long recital short, he put it satisfactorily into four lines and we waited for replies. We'll skip the first forty or fifty that didn't suit us. One day there came a gentleman who looked at our four rooms, raved over them and made a proposition, to wit: If we would put a gas range and sink in the red room, open up the wall in the front room and build a sleeping porch for his baby, furnish refrigerating plant for all the baby's milk and allow him the free use of the telephone, he would take our four rooms for three months at $18 a month.

"My good friend," I said, with suppressed emotion, "you overwhelm us. Can't we remove the roof and build a little nursery for the baby, and rig you up a rainy-weather playroom in the basement? We expected to get $50 a month, unfurnished, without changes; but you have made us to see the error of our conceit. Can't we let you have the piano at the end of your three months, to move away to your future home, as an expression of good will?"

He made a gesture of protest.

"No," I insisted, "we will not have it any other way. You must accept our hospitality, sir—you simply must! My wife has a diamond ring that I'm sure she would be delighted to give your wife, and any time you want a trunk carried up or down stairs just call on me. My clothes would about fit you—allow me to lend you my dress suit and pajamas! Not a word, sir, not a word! I will not permit you to excel me in generosity. And as for your $18. I wouldn't think of taking it! Give it to a fund to provide red flannel nightshirts for the little heathens in Timbuctoo. They need the night shirts, and, believe me, I thoroughly detest money!"

He went away, and going in told the conductor that he was glad he didn't get roped into that lunatic asylum.

Now the Adventure of the Mysterious Push Button:

What a wonderful lot of push buttons a contractor can get into ten rooms and a basement!

My wife and I jammed our thumbs into at least thirty different kinds, trying them out. There were push buttons to turn on the electric light, push buttons to call the indefinite servant, push buttons to ring bells of all sorts. I half expected to find a push button that would kick a collector off the porch, but was disappointed.

We wondered who made all the push buttons, and how much royalty they paid.

A push button in That House I Bought turns on the porch light and another on the second floor lights the hallway at the foot of the grand staircase, so that in case of burglars the lady of the house doesn't have to go down in advance, carrying the lamp.

"That," I said, "is a distinct convenience. I can imagine the discomfiture of the burglar who suddenly finds himself illuminated for a Mardi Gras pageant, all ready to be shot up like a cheese or a porous plaster."

"Would you shoot a burglar?" asked my wife admiringly.

I imitated a pouter pigeon with my chest.

"The extent of my murders," I replied, "would be limited only by the supply of burglars."

It does a fellow a lot of good, when he is just moving into the responsibilities of a real citizen, to perform mental assassinations like that. I piled up my dead and we passed on.

We found, by pushing another button, that the Consolidated Gas and Electric Light Company had provided the chandeliers in both parlor and dining room with as many globes as could be crowded into the set. The man who put them in left them all turned on. We burned fully seven cents' worth of watts before it occurred to us to limit the incandescence by turning off a few globes. Then my wife got a mania for economizing, and it was Uncle Henry on a high chair under every individual set of lights, tickling the little flat black key things into a subdued quiescence. We left one watt incubator in each set, with the understanding that if company came we'd turn on the whole business and average it up on the month by sitting as late as possible on the front porch.

But there was one button that got me. It was in the front bedroom with the double-mirror doors on the big closet. We pushed it and didn't hear a thing. Logically, it ought to do something. I pushed again and listened for the tinkle. My wife went upstairs and downstairs, while I pushed, and every now and then I'd yell at her.

"Anything happening?"

"No," she would reply. "Push it real quickly and see if you can't take it by surprise!"

I tried every method I could think of to make that push button earn its existence. Every day since I've tried it, determined to learn what it ought to do or die in the attempt. But to this day that push button is a mystery.

The Adventure of the Reluctant Cow:

Billy Pentz wants to know if we will keep a bee at our house. We will not. And another thing, I don't know why bees are kept in an apiary. I cannot see the line of identification between bees and apes. Apes should be kept in an apiary; bees should be kept in a beeswax.

But we have been thinking about a cow. There is a company cowary right back of our house, and when the wind is from the south the call of the diary is strong upon us. Pardon me, I should have written the dairy. There's another digression. Why should the transportation of two letters change a notebook into a milk foundry?

I watched William milking a cow in the cowary, and the ease with which he performed what to me seemed no less than magic was simply astounding. Sitting there as quietly as you please, on an inverted bucket, with an uninverted bucket between his knees, he directed streams of embryo butter and ice-cream and custard into the centre of a foaming pool with no more concern than a Queen of the sixth century would show in knifing a kneeling page.

"We will get a cow," I announced briefly, but with that masterful tone that identifies me in any company.

My wife looked at me, the way some women look at some men. I withered but held my ground.

"Why, you can't even milk a cow!" she said.

Now, I've never taken a dare from any woman. I hiked right back down the patch, careless of the newly sown grass plots, and blundered into the cowary.

"William," I said, "arise and hand me that can! I'm going to show you how I used to milk when I was a cowboy!"

If this were fiction it would be funny, but it's fact; and many a thing that's funny in fiction is tragedy in fact.

William handed me the bucket. I said, "So, Bossy," and seated myself just as I had seen William do it, with my feet crossed and the bucket between my knees. That it slipped the first time and slopped over my trousers was merely an incident. After I'd managed a half-nelson grip with my knee caps I grabbed a couple of the cow's depending protuberances and squeezed. Nothing happened. I squeezed again and pulled. A couple of drops trickled into the palms of my hands. Encouraged, I tried a jiu-jitsu stunt designed to astonish the cow into yielding to superior intelligence, and she looked around at me and grinned.

I say that cow grinned. Some one once told me that among animals only hyenas could grin. Then this cow was a hyena, that's all.

I tackled her again, shoving my head into her ribs after the manner of certain yokels I had observed, as if there must be a secret spring to push open the vents. William and the cow grinned a duet. I pulled and pushed, twisted and tugged, coaxed and threatened, and finally I said something to that cow that was uncouth.

Heaven forgive me for ever speaking rudely to a lady beef!

She lifted her near hind hoof and sent the bucket flying. Then she moved over against me and mingled me with the soft sod. I got up and silently handed William a quarter, winking the while to accent the hush. When I went into the house I said:

"My dear, William informs me that the company may keep a cow around here, but by the terms of our purchase we may not. It's a rank discrimination, but I'm afraid we cannot have a cow. The Duke of Mont Alto and the city ordinances will not permit it!"

The Adventure of the Nasty Little Fat Robin:

I don't know the botanical names of the birds around our house; in fact, I am not sure that botany is the science of birds. But, at any rate, we have half a dozen trees and each one is a choir loft. No wheezing organ, with rattling foot pedals and thumping water-pump, disturbs the clear harmonies of their music. No sonorous basso in the amen corner growls out a flat profundo to insult the memory of Phœbe Carey; no shrill tenor raises his chin until his Adam's apple sticks out like a loose bung in a cider barrel, to shriek his blasphemy of divine music!

We have just the little birds, whose throats swell and swell until you would think they must burst, and who sing their love-bugles through the branches careless of their audience. Wonderful cadenzas chase each other in a game of lyric tag, never wearying, never breaking. Trills that can be written only in spirit composition—long notes that sometimes salute a saint, sometimes absolve a sinner—sibilant sighs that bring up memories—all these things we have in our choir, and upon them there is no mortgage!

There's a nasty little fat robin outside our kitchen door, though, who is some day going to meet disaster.

We feed the robins on crumbs, and throw them such little delicacies as cracked marrow bones, chunks of suet and bits of sugar. When they have finished eating they hurry to the end of the house, where there is always a little water trickling out to make a bird fountain. (Item: I must build a regular bird fountain.) This nasty little fat robin, who is going straight into trouble, is a hog on wings. All the others will be cheerfully setting about their dinner, when he will rush in, nibble a single bite and then stand guard over the rest, to keep them from it. I do not know whether to call him Rottenfeller for hogging it, or Rosenfelt for fighting.

Now Kadott is my pet. I've called her Kadott for a little missionary Japanese friend, who lives at Hadji Konak, and I wonder if the Japanese at Hadji Konak will appreciate the honor? The one thing that makes me fond of Kadott is that she is very much in love with me; but she annoys me, too, because she makes me keep my distance and still coquettes. She has an odd little trick of coming nearly to me, turning her head and cocking her ear, as if to say:

"There is going to be a love scene, and I must beware of eavesdroppers."

Some of these days she will eat from my hand. But now she only comes close and darts away at the first approach. She has built her nest and she has the mother instinct. When she has hatched her little family I'm going to be Uncle Henry to every one of them.

And that is what I've been trying to get to. If the nasty little fat robin butts into Kadott's family relations, there will be a murder. My hands will be red with the blood of a bandit.

When you come out to That House I Bought, stay all night and listen to the birds in the early morning. It seems to me that a man who listens to the birds in the right spirit ought to make a fairly decent citizen, in time.

SEVENTH PERIOD

My wife is a most observant woman.

"Love," she said to me, apparently apropos of nothing at all, "must be a farce in a country where there is no moonlight."

I nodded assent. It didn't strike me as being worth much more.

"I wonder what is the trouble?" she said, after a pause.

"Trouble?" I repeated inquiringly.

"Across the street," she explained, "there were two Silhouettes in the parlor Monday night, and one went away early; the other had her handkerchief to her eyes–"

"Oho! So you've been keeping cases, eh?"

"I don't get your vernacular," she retorted meaningly.

"Well—er—what's this got to do with moonlight?" I demanded, changing the subject.

"It was moonlight last night, and it's moonlight to-night," she replied, "and all the derbies on the hat-rack over there belong to the men in the family, and it's nine-thirty. It seems to me that if I were the Man Silhouette, I'd at least write, but the mailman hasn't stopped there but once in four days, and then he only delivered a circular, because I got one myself and I recognized it by the big red type on the envelope, and—I think it's a shame, that's what I do, and I don't care, so there!"