It was curious, but the letter could not be found; high and low, in every corner, on every shelf, did we look, but in vain; so we were compelled to give up the search. I did not regret it in the least, for I had learned from one of the young men belonging to Mr. Bartlett’s office that he intended to make me an offer. Mr. Blagge had answered his letter, stating why I did not write myself, and as this thing did not concern me any further I dismissed the subject from my mind, not even thinking it worth mentioning when I returned to my wife. Every evening, the moment the sun went down, I returned to that dear, solitary one, and then after taking our supper we would wander about from place to place, caring very little in what direction we strayed. We lived for ourselves, and most deeply and gratefully did we enjoy the felicity of being together unnoticed and unknown. We frequently passed a small, one-storied brick building; it was untenanted, and had been shut up for two years, not happening to suit any one. My wife thought, if it were repaired a little, it might answer for a dwelling house, for that a stack of chimneys could soon be run up. On inquiry I found that it had been built for lawyers’ offices during the last yellow fever that had appeared in the city, and that it had since that been only used occasionally for a school-house. There were four very small rooms, only ten feet square, with a narrow hall in the centre, and neither cellar nor garret; but the house stood among trees and back from the street, so that this was a charm to counterbalance many inconveniences. I saw the owner of it, and he agreed to put it in repair provided I took it on a lease for four years; this I gladly did; the rent was to be eighty dollars a year, and cheap enough we thought it, as there was a good well of water directly in front of the house. Aunt Martha came in the precise moment that she was wanted, and now whilst the house was being repaired there came the pleasant task of going from shop to shop to purchase the tiny furniture that was to suit these tiny rooms. The front one of the left hand rooms was to be used as a bed room for aunt Martha, and the one behind it as a kitchen; of the other two the front was to be the parlour, and the back one our bed room. No one can tell the pleasure I had in hearing and seeing all that was going on—I had read of going to coronations and to brilliant spectacles, but I hastened home every evening with a far more exquisite pleasure to hold one end of a breadth of carpeting whilst my dear wife cut it off, or listen to her little rambles with aunt Martha, or looked at the neat candlesticks and the little set of china, all so cheap and yet so very simple and pretty.