Out Of The Frying Pain Into The Fire - Page 2

"I saw a bill on a house in Seventh street yesterday, and I had a great mind, then, to stop and look at it. It was a beautiful place, just what we want."

"Put your things on, Sarah, right away, and go and see about it. Depend upon it, we can't do worse than this."

"Worse! No, indeed, that's impossible. But Mr. Plunket!"

"Pshaw! never mind him; he's opposed to every thing. If you had given him his way, where would you have been now?"

Mrs. Plunket did not reply to this, for the question brought back the recollection of a beautiful little house, new, and perfect in every part, from which she had forced her husband to move, because the parlours were not quite large enough. Never, before nor since, had they been so comfortably situated.

Acting as well from her own inclination as from her mother's advice, Mrs. Plunket went and made an examination of the house upon which she had seen the bill.

"Oh, it is such a love of a house!" she said, upon her return. "Perfect in every respect: it is larger than this, and is full of closets; and the rent is just the same."

"Did you get the refusal of it?"

"Yes. I told the landlord that I would give him an answer by to-morrow morning. He says there are a great many people after it; that he could have rented it a dozen times, if he had approved the tenants who offered. He says he knows Mr. Plunket very well, and will be happy to rent him the house."

"We must take it, by all means."

"That is, if Mr. Plunket is willing."

"Willing! Of course, he'll have to be willing."

"Oh, it is such a love of a house, ma!"

"I'm sure it must be."

"A very different kind of an affair from this, you may be certain."

When Mr. Plunket came home that evening, his wife said to him, quite amiably--"Oh, you don't know what, a love of a house I saw to-day up in Seventh street; larger, better, and more convenient than this in every way, and the rent is just the same."

"But I am sure, Sarah, we are very comfortable here."

"Comfortable! Good gracious, Mr. Plunket, I should like to know what you call comfort. How can any one be comfortable in such a miserable old rattletrap of a place as this?"

"You thought it a love of a house, you remember, before we came into it."

"Me? Me? Mr. Plunket? Why, I never liked it; and it was all your fault that we ever moved here."

"My fault?"

"Yes, indeed, it was all your fault. I wanted the house in Walnut street, but you were afraid of a little more rent. Oh, no, Mr. Plunket, you mustn't blame me for moving into this barracks of a place; you have only yourself to thank for that; and now I