"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.