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!"