Toward the end of the summer we were all prospering. The factory business was coming up to expectations, the new baby was developing into a lusty child, and even my mother had ceased to be openly antagonistic. She was not entirely cordial, and she still kept a certain distance between herself and Helen—a distance which, strangely enough, also included Helen's baby; nevertheless, there were occasions when she seemed to forget her attitude. We spent several week-ends in the country as a family, and no incident occurred to disturb either Helen or me.

In fact, the prosperity and good nature were so general that once or twice Helen and I slipped away to look at little houses in the suburban country. We found the very thing we wanted at a small village in Hertfordshire, not far from St. Albans. It was a modern house, but it had a red-tiled roof and a pleasant garden of its own. "Ten minutes from the station," the agent said. He was a brisk walker. Helen went into raptures over the interior. She counted up seven bedrooms, four on the second, three above. "Just the right number," she announced. It was a surprise to me that seven bedrooms were our lucky quota. I was rather vague about bedrooms, never having thought out how many we should need. Downstairs there was a sitting-room, a dining-room, another room, the kitchen, and what the agent, once more, referred to as "the usual offices." There was a porcelain bath, so shiny and white that had we had any money the matter would have been settled then and there.

We went back to Kensington with the news of our discovery. After hearing the price—for the property was a freehold—my father inquired if it was actually what Helen and I really wanted. We assured him it was.

"Very well," my father overwhelmed us by saying; "if you want it, you shall have it."

He and my mother, it appeared, were going to Paris for a year, partly for the sake of my sister's education. They had already decided to give up the Kensington house, leaving Helen and me on our own. Our plans fitted in with theirs.

"You may call the house a belated wedding present," my father said.

In due time the agent and solicitors from far and near brought their endless papers, my father wrote out a check, we all signed our names a great many times, and the house was ours. Nor did my father's generosity stop there. Another check was handed to Helen. My father told her to furnish the house as well as she could with it. That evening Helen and I sat up half the night, making out lists of things. I wrote them down and Helen thought them out. Pots and pans seemed extraordinarily numerous. We were interrupted only by the younger Miss Helen demanding nourishment.

For the next two weeks we trudged up and down Tottenham Court Road shopping. Such discussions and arguments as Helen had with shop assistants; such checking of catalogues and comparing of prices! I suggested getting a lump price on the whole thing from one shop, thus simplifying the process. My commonsense suggestion was emphatically vetoed. It simply wasn't done that way—not when one furnished a house. I rather liked to sit on the edge of a counter and listen to Helen bullying young shopmen. I marvelled at her persistence, to say nothing of her obstinacy in getting them around to her demands. She accepted no provisos and exceptions. The daily struggle would have worn me out; she returned, to it fresh each morning, armed at all points cap-a-pie. Each evening we laid plans for the action of the following day. We were buying the minimum of furniture; the rest we hoped to pick up second-hand, old cottage tables and the like. We did, as a matter of fact, make one or two by-excursions down the Fulham Road to see the antique shops. We found the owners of these shops, however, too canny for our purposes. They fancied that Helen and I were American tourists and stuck their prices up accordingly.

The family listened with obvious amusement, during dinner each night, to our adventures and progress. They offered no advice, nor did we seek any, for we wanted to do it alone. Occasionally Helen and my mother conferred over the contents of the kitchen. Not everything bore the same name as in America. Helen had to ask what the English equivalents were.

Coming out of Kettner's one day in Soho, I observed a fascinating row of copper sauce-pans hanging in a smelly little French shop. I made Helen's growing equipment a present of this addition. "You can do me a poussin sauté, gran'mère, en casserole," I explained. It was Helen's turn to look a little vague.

We set the first of October as the date on which we hoped to move in. We were having the walls done and a kitchen range installed. Time was no object whatever to the group of men who had taken over these two jobs.

"Probably," I said to Helen, "they are enjoying a summer in the country."

"I hope they don't remain over for the hunting," she answered, thereby proving that she had begun to read Punch to some purpose.

The day actually did come at last. We sent off one van load from Kensington, said good-bye until next Sunday to the family, bundled nurse and the baby into a one-horse omnibus, and, accompanied by Chitty as general handy man, drove off for Euston. Our village was on the London and Northwestern.

We no longer had the trained nurse, of course, but a plain ordinary everyday nurse, who, according to Helen, was most unscientific. Helen had been reading up in that abominable book on the horrors of babies. I wanted to show baby the horse, but Helen informed me the child was as yet quite unable to appreciate the privilege.

All this by the way. We were more excited over the journey to our new home than we had been on our wedding-day. We were now definitely for ourselves.

"No one to care if I spill pipe ashes on the rugs," I said. I judged from Helen's reception of this that my illustration of liberty was not well-chosen. "I mean," I went on, to make amends, "that you will be at home in your own house, able to do just as you like." This was clearly a much better example of my thought.

We went first class, because of the baby. Helen thought first-class carriages would have fewer germs in them. It had an added advantage: we had the compartment to ourselves, except for the nurse. Chitty went third.

At the station Chitty highly incensed the only porter by taking charge of all our luggage. In some miraculous fashion he also packed us all into one fly, seating himself beside the driver. We drove up to our new home in state, Helen and I hand in hand, the baby cooing from the nurse's shoulder.

Inside we found a solitary representative of the kitchen-range-and-decorating crew, who informed us that he had not as yet been able to "connect the range," but that this would certainly be accomplished in two or three days. Until then we could not build a fire in it or do any cooking. Helen and I sat down on our luggage for a counsel of war over the situation. Should we send nurse and the baby back to Kensington? It was Chitty who solved the problem.

"I beg pardon, sir," he said, touching his forelock, "but I could build a bit of fire in the back garden, sir, and do the cooking on that."

Helen and I leaped at the proposal. It was the very thing! Nurse made it evident she did not approve it. We overruled her, and I gave Chitty immediate instructions to prepare luncheon. He took a box of matches and a frying pan and stepped outside.

Soon the vans arrived, for they had left town early in the morning. There also came a cook and a housemaid, engaged a month ago from a local employment agency. The cook's indignation at the condition of the range knew no bounds. She was not pacified by being shown Chitty hard at work in the garden. The smoke from his camp fire had already attracted the attention of two or three female neighbours. Helen's tact disposed of the cook for the time being. I went out to see how Chitty was getting along.

"What are we eating, Chitty?"

"Sausages and fried tomatoes, sir," he answered with the customary salute.

"Mind you do enough for the lot of us," I instructed him.

"Very good, sir."

I carried a deal table into the dining room, for the regular furniture was mostly in a chaotic pyramid on the pavement in front. Helen found knives, forks, and plates. The housemaid appeared to be paralyzed by circumstances. She was of little or no assistance. So it was that, amid gales of laughter from Helen, we sat down to the first meal under our own roof.

"The devil of it all is," I philosophized to her, between bites, "that nothing in this world ever turns out as one has imagined it will. Now, the number of times we have pictured ourselves eating our first dinner in our own home—"

"But what oceans more fun it is, like this," Helen interrupted.

"There is a great deal in your point of view, lady with the nice eyes," I agreed, carving her a wedge of bread from a household loaf. "What do you think, littlest Helen?" I added, turning to the baby, who sat, a solemn spectator, on nurse's lap.

"Now, Ted, please don't stir the baby up when she's being good," Helen cautioned. She always said that if I approached the child.

"When," I asked with mock irony, "will my daughter reach such an age of discretion that I may be permitted to converse with her?"

"You are being silly, Ted. If you'll promise to carry her about afterwards until she stops howling, you can speak to her now."

"I refuse your terms, and repudiate the vile implied slander," I returned, winking at the younger Helen. I believe the child sided with me. I poured myself a glass of stout and solemnly drank the baby's health. She continued to stare at me, not displeased.

"Ted, you dear idiot," exclaimed Helen, jumping up and kissing me in defiance of the nurse's presence.

"You have stout on your lips—serve you right," I said to the now retreating Helen. She scrubbed her face violently with a handkerchief no bigger than a postage stamp.

"Men are disgusting creatures."

"They are," I mused; "yet women love them." I drank deep of the stout.

"Ted, I'll shake you if you don't behave." She made a series of cabalistic signs at me, which, I took it, had reference to nurse. "It's time for baby's nap."

"Coward woman," I ejaculated, "you are afraid of me."

"Will you walk up to the nursery and set up the baby's crib?"

"Not unless I am paid in advance."

Helen hastily dabbed a kiss on my cheek. "Now, Ted, please!"

"I obey, Omphale. Call in Chitty."

"Call him in yourself," was Helen's parting shot.

Chitty and I laboured some time setting up beds, beginning with the crib in the nursery. Though the heavens were to fall, the baby had to have a nap at precisely two o'clock every afternoon. We were interrupted once by Helen, who reported that cook, housemaid, and nurse alike had refused point blank to eat any of Chitty's cooking. It ended by our sending them all off to a public house, near the station, where food was obtainable.

"An ominous look-out until we get that range going," I growled.

"I wish we had a Polish girl from Deep Harbor," was Helen's comment after her first run-in with English servants.

"I had rather have a Pole from Deep Harbor than an American from Warsaw," I amended.

"That is nonsense, Ted," Helen said.

"It isn't, if you think it over," I replied.

Chitty and I resumed setting up beds. At the end of the first hour I paused. My face was moist.

"Chitty," I observed, "living is composed of a great many details. Take a bed, for example. You find them in lots of rooms, looking harmless enough. It is only when you analyze them, or, more correctly speaking, synthetize them—if that is, in fact, the word—that you realize their complexity."

"Yessir," said Chitty. "It's 'ard work for a gentleman, I dare say."

"Then dare say so no longer. On with our task."

"Very good, sir."

Gradually we reached the top of the house and the end of the infernal job. Helen appeared again. "Do we have tea?" she asked.

"How long since is it, madam," I asked sternly, "that afternoon tea became a necessity in your life? Shall we tolerate this aping of foreign customs?"

"I can easily make the madam a cup of tea, sir," Chitty cut in, a shade of anxiety in his tone.

"Then let the madam have her tea," I answered, "since her throat burns."

"Ted," said Helen, as Chitty disappeared, "how am I going to have any discipline among the servants if you persist in making a damn fool of yourself in their presence?"

"A what, madam?" I inquired.

"A damn fool," said Helen firmly.

"You shall pay dear for that, madam," I exclaimed, seizing her. It was several minutes later that we went back to our dining room for tea, our arms about one another like a Bank holiday couple at Hampstead Heath.

Chitty provided a tin of tea, black as Cimmerian darkness. The furniture had by now been removed from the pavement and piled in smaller individual pyramids in each room.

"It looks absolutely hopeless, Ted," said Helen, shuddering over a taste of Chitty's tea, as well she might. "Shall we ever get settled?"

"I am so comfortable," I replied, "that it is a matter of complete indifference to me. Let's live as we are."

At this moment a surprise arrived. The family, whether suspecting the result of our first day's housekeeping, or out of sheer good will, had sent us a large hamper of food from Fortnum and Mason's. There was a bottle of champagne to give the final glow. No need for Chitty to cook any more that day. We summoned him from his tea. I verily believe he had consumed two quarts of that brew of his—proof positive that the British army is made of stern stuff, "hearts of oak and tummies of copper," Helen ventu............