Hazard of New Fortunes, a — Complete by William Dean Howells
page 51 of 583 (08%)
page 51 of 583 (08%)
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referred to her husband.
"Why, I shouldn't care for the steam heat if--What is the rent?" he broke off to ask the janitor. "Nine hundred, sir." March concluded to his wife, "If it were furnished." "Why, of course! What could I have been thinking of? We're looking for a furnished flat," she explained to the janitor, "and this was so pleasant and homelike that I never thought whether it was furnished or not." She smiled upon the janitor, and he entered into the joke and chuckled so amiably at her flattering oversight on the way down-stairs that she said, as she pinched her husband's arm, "Now, if you don't give him a quarter I'll never speak to you again, Basil!" "I would have given half a dollar willingly to get you beyond his glamour," said March, when they were safely on the pavement outside. "If it hadn't been for my strength of character, you'd have taken an unfurnished flat without heat and with no elevator, at nine hundred a year, when you had just sworn me to steam heat, an elevator, furniture, and eight hundred." "Yes! How could I have lost my head so completely?" she said, with a lenient amusement in her aberration which she was not always able to feel in her husband's. "The next time a colored janitor opens the door to us, I'll tell him the |
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