That night they slept in the garage. With a flash of her old independence, Nancy so decided it. She was firm in declining the hospitable offers that would have scattered the Bradleys among the neighbouring homes for the night.
"No, no—we're all together," Nancy said, smiling. "I don't want to separate again, for a while." She calmly estimated the salvage—beds and bedding, some chairs, rugs, and small tables, tumbled heaps of the children's clothes, and odd lots of china and glass.
Priscilla was presently set to amuse herself, on a rug on the lawn, and the enraptured children and Agnes and the new puppy bustled joyfully about among the heterogeneous possessions of the evicted family, under Nancy's direction. There was much hilarity, as the new settling began, the boys were miracles of obedience and intelligence, and Anne laughed some colour into her face for the first time in weeks. Nancy was in her element, there was much to do, and she was the only person who knew how it should be done. Even Bert stood amazed at her efficiency, and accepted her orders admiringly.
In the exquisite summer twilight she sent him to the Biggerstaffs'. Nobody had yet found sleeping wear for the man of the family, that was message one. And message two was the grateful acceptance of the fresh milk that had been offered. Everybody he met wanted to add something to these modest demands. Bert had not felt himself so surrounded with affection and sympathy for many years. At seven o'clock he was back at the garage, heavily laden, but cheerful.
Nancy leaned out of the upper window, where geraniums in boxes bloomed as they had bloomed when first the Bradleys came to Holly Court and called out joyfully, "See how nice we are!" The children, laughing and stumbling over each other, were carrying miscellaneous loads of clothing and bedding upstairs. Bert picked up two pillows and an odd bureau drawer full of garments, and followed them. His wife, busy and smiling, greeted him.
"That's lovely, dear—and that just about finishes us, up here. You see we've cleared out these two big rooms, and the Ingrams' man came just in time to set up the beds. This is our room, and Agnes and the girls will have the other. The boys will have to sleep on the double couch downstairs, to-morrow they can have a tent on the lawn right back of us. Bring that drawer here, it goes in this chest. I thought it was missing, but we'll straighten everything out to-morrow, and see where we stand. The piano's out there on the lawn, and I wish you'd cover it with something, unless you get some one after supper to help you move it in. It goes in the corner where the boys' sleds were, downstairs. Supper's ready, Bert, if you are!"
"Perhaps you'd like me to dress?" Bert said, deeply amused. Anne and her brothers laughed uproariously, as they all went down the narrow stairs.
"No, but do come down and see how nice it is!" his wife said eagerly. Hanging on his arm, she showed him the comfort downstairs. The big room that had been large enough to house two cars had been swept, and the rugs laid over the concrete floor. Through a westerly window crossed by rose-vines the last light of the long day fell softly upon a small table set for supper. Priscilla was already in her high chair demanding food. At the back of the room, on the long table once used for tools and tubes, Agnes was busy with a coal-oil stove and Nancy's copper blazer. A heartening aroma of fresh coffee was mingling with other good odours from that region.
Contentedly, the Bradleys dined. Bert served scrambled eggs and canned macaroni to the ravenous children—a meal that was supplemented by a cold roast fowl from the Rose's, a sheet of rolls brought at the last moment by the Fieldings' man, sweet butter and peach ice-cream from the Seward Smiths, and a tray of various delicacies from the concerned and sympathetic Ingrams. Every one was hungry and excited, and more than once the boys made their father shout with laughter. They were amusing kids, his indulgent look said to his wife.
At the conclusion of the meal little Anne went around the table, and got into her father's lap.
"'Member I used to do this when I was just a little girl?" Anne asked, happily. Nancy and Bert looked for a second at each other over the relaxed little head. It was almost dark now, Priscilla was silent in her mother's arms, even the boys were quiet. Bert smoked, and Nancy spoke now and then to the sleepy baby.
It was with an effort that she roused herself, to lead the little quartette upstairs. And even as she did so she remembered this old sensation, the old reluctance to leave after-dinner quiet and relaxation for the riot of the nursery. Smiling, she carried the baby upstairs, and settled the chattering children in all the novelty of the bare wide rooms.
Bert could hear the diminishing trills of talk and laughter, the repeated good-nights. The oblong of light from the upper window faded suddenly from the lawn. Somewhere from the big closet at the back, lately filled with slip-covers and new tires, Agnes hummed over the subdued click and tinkle of dishes and silver, and he could hear Nancy's feet coming carefully down the steep, unfamiliar stairway. Presently she joined him in the soft early darkness of the doorway, silently took the wide arm of his porch-chair, and leaned against his shoulder. Bert put his arm about her.
It was a heavenly summer evening, luminous even before the moon-rising. The last drift of smoke was gone, and the garden drenched with scent. Under the first stars the shrubs and trees stood in panoramic perspective; the lawns looked wide and smooth. Down the street, under a dark arch of elms, the lights of other houses showed yellow and warm; now and then a motor-car swept by, sending a circle of white light for a few moments against the gloom.
"Dead, dear?" Bert asked, after awhile. Nancy sighed contentedly before she answered:
"Tired, of course—a little!"
"Well," summarized Bert, after another pause, "we have now reduced our problem somewhat. A man, his wife, his children. There we are!"
"A roof above his head, a maid-servant, and all the Sunday meals in the house!" Nancy added optimistically.
"A barn roof," amended Bert.
"Barns have sheltered babies before this," Nancy reflected whimsically.Again she sighed. "I suppose babies do burn to death, sometimes, Bert?One sees it in the paper; just a line or two. I remember—"
"Don't let your mind dwell on that side of it, Nance. For that matter a brick might fall off the roof on our heads now."
"Yes, I know. But Priscilla was my responsibility, and I was a mile away."
"You'll be a mile away from her many a time and oft," Bert reminded her wholesomely.
"When I have to be," she conceded, slowly. "But to-day—" Her voice sank, and Bert, glancing sidewise at her, saw that her face was very thoughtful. "Bert," she said, "we have a good deal to be thankful for."
"Everything in the world!"
Another silence. Then Nancy said briskly:
"Well! Listen to what I've planned, Bert, and tell me what you think. Item one: this is vacation, but when it's over I want to start Anne and the boys in at the village school. They can cut right across the field at the back here, it's just a good walk for them. They're frantic to go, instead of to Fraulein, and I'm perfectly satisfied to have them!"
"Sure you are?" the man asked, a little touched, for this had been a long-disputed point.
"Oh, quite! Just as you and I did. And then, item two: Agnes is a good plain cook, and Priscilla is an angel. I'll walk to market every day, and send out the laundry, and keep Priscilla with me. So that makes Agnes our entire domestic staff—she's enthusiastic, so don't begin to curl your lips over it. Then we'll have to have a floor in here, and cut a window in the closet back there, and put in a little gas stove, and before winter we'll put on a little addition—a kitchen in back, with a room for the boys above. And we'll shut the big double doors, and I'll have another window box right across their windows, and curtain the whole place in plain net. The boys can sleep in the tent for the time being. There's a furnace, but we'll have to make some provision for coal—"
"But, my good woman, you don't propose to make this arrangement permanent, I suppose?" Bert said, bewilderedly. "Why, I meant to spend to-morrow looking about—"
"Why shouldn't it be permanent?" Nancy demanded. "We can kitch and dine and sit in the big room, we'll have all the room we want, upstairs. It's the only place in the world where we don't have to pay rent. It's quiet, it's off the main road, nobody will see what we are doing here, and nobody'll care!"
"They'll see us fast enough," Bert said doubtfully. "I never heard of any one doing it—I don't know what people would say!"
"Bert," Nancy assured him seriously, "I don't care what they say. I've been thinking it all over, and I believe I can risk the opinion of Marlborough Gardens! Some of them will drop us, and you and I know who they are. How much do we care? And the others will realize that we are hard hit financially, and trying to catch up. Mary Ingram came over while you were away, perfectly aghast. She had just heard of it. I told her what we were trying to do, and she said—well, she said just the one thing that really could have helped me. She said: 'You'll have great fun—we lived in our garage while the house was being built, and it was quite the happiest summer we ever had down here!'" Nancy had squared herself on the arm of his chair so that Bert could see her bright eyes in the dark. "It was just like Mary, to put it that way," she went on. "For of course even Holly Court was never as large as the Ingrams' garage, and all those brick arches and things join it to the house anyway, but it made me think how much wiser it is to do things your own way, instead of some other people's way! And, Bert, we're going to have such fun! We'll keep the car, and you can run it on Sundays, and perhaps I will a little, during the week, and at night or when it rains we can cover it with a tarpaulin, and we'll have picnics with the children all summer long! And I'll make you 'chicken Nancy' again, and popovers, on Sunday mornings! I love to cook. I love to tell stories to children. I love to pack mashy suppers and get all dirty and hot dragging them to the beach, and I love to stuff my own Thanksgiving turkey, in my own way! We haven't had a real Thanksgiving turkey for four or five years! We'll have no rent—Agnes gets thirty—light will be almost nothing, and coal about a tenth of what it was—Bert, we'll spend about two hundred a month, all told!"
"I don't say yet that you ought to try it," Bert said suddenly, in his old, excited, earnest way. "But of course that would—well, it would just about make me. I could plunge into the other thing, I wouldn't have this place on my mind!"
"There are some bills, you know, Bert."
"The extra thousand will take care of those!"
"So that we start in with a clean slate. Oh, Bert!" Nancy's voice was as exultant as a child's. "Bert—my fur coat, and your coat! I've just remembered they're in storage! Isn't that luck!"
Bert laughed at her face.
"Funny how your viewpoint on luck changes. This morning you had the coat and the Lord knows how much silver and glass and lace besides—"
"Oh, I know. But that's the kind of a woman I am, Bert. I don't like things to come to me so fast that I can't taste them. I don't like having four servants, I get more satisfaction out of one. And if I am hospitable, I'd rather give meals and rooms to persons who really need them, than to others who have left better meals and better rooms to come and share mine!
"Why, Bert dear," Nancy's cheek was against his now, "the thought of waking up in the morning and realizing that nobody expects anything of me makes me feel young again! It makes me feel as if I was breathing fresh air deep down into my lungs. We haven't room for servants, we have no guest room, I simply can't do anything but amuse Priscilla and make desserts. We'll have the children at the dinner table every night, and nights that Agnes is off, I'll have a dotted black and white percale apron for you—"
This was old history, there had been a dotted percale apron years ago, and Nancy was joking, but Bert did not laugh. He made a gruff sound, and tightened his arm.
"Bert," said his wife, seriously, "Bert, when I kissed you this afternoon, dirty and hot and sooty as you were, I knew that I'd been missing something for a long time!"
Again Bert made a gruff sound, and this time he kissed his wife, but he did not speak for a moment. When he did, it was with a long, deep breath.
"Lord—Lord—Lord!" said he.
"Why do you say that?" asked Nancy.
"Oh, I was just thinking!" Bert stretched in his chair, to the infinite peril of his equilibrium and hers. "I was just thinking what a wonderful thing it is to be married, and to climb and fall, and succeed and fail, and all the rest of it!" he said contentedly. "I'll bet you there are lots of rich men who would like to try it again! I was just thinking what corking times we're going to have this year, what it's going to be like to have my little commutation punched like the rest of 'em, and come home in the dark, winter nights, to just my own wife and my own kids! I like company now and then—the Biggerstaffs and the Ingrams—but I like you all the year round. We'll—we'll read Dickens this winter!"
Nancy gave a laugh that was half a sob.
"Bert—we were always going to read Dickens! Do you remember?"
"Do I remember!" He smoked for a while in silence. Then he chuckled. "Do you remember the Sunday breakfasts in the East Eleventh Street flat? With real cream and corn bread? Do you remember wheeling Junior through the park?"
Nancy cleared her throat.
"I remember it all!"
There was another silence. Then Bert straightened suddenly, and asked with concern:
"Nancy—what is it? You're all tired out, you poor little girl. Don't, dear—don't cry, Nancy!"
Nancy, groping for his handkerchief, battling with tears, feeling his kiss on her wet cheek, laughed shakily in the dark.
"I—I can't help it, Bert!" said she. "I'm—I'm so happy!"