The little house on Page Avenue, too new for wall paper, still exuding
the indescribable cold, white smell of mortar in the drying, was none
the less---and with the flexible personality of houses--taking on the
print of the family. A mission dining-room set, ordered wholesale
through the machinations of one of Mrs. Becker's euchre friends,
arriving from Grand Rapids two months late, completed a careful and
thrifty period of housefurnishing. There were an upright piano, still
rented, but, like the house, payments to apply to a possible future
purchase, in the square of "reception hall"; a double brass bedstead in
the second-story front; and tucked away in the back of the tiny house,
overlooking, through sheerest of dimity curtains, a rolling ocean of
empty lots, the German-silver manicure set spread out on the dressing
table, Lilly's bird's-eye-maple bedroom come true.
Followed even then a long and uneasy period of adjustment. The up and
down stairs tugged at the rear muscles of Mrs. Becker's legs, compelling
evening foot baths. Mr. Becker chafed under the twenty minutes
additional street-car ride, eating his dinner by gaslight even in
August.
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