That House I Bought _A LITTLE LEAF FROM LIFE_ BY HENRY EDWARD WARNER [Illustration: Logo] G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY _That House I Bought_ DEDICATION Why a dedication? Why a preface--a foreword? Why any comment, save the title and the price mark? Simplicity itself! The preface, foreword, dedication--what you may term it--gives opportunity to apologize for the liberality with which the author betrays his egotism, in the thickly sprinkled perpendicular pronoun. And yet this plain young tale of plain things could not be told in the third person, since it is a mere setting down of real experience, painfully truthful and laboriously pruned where imagination was tempted to stray into fields of fiction. There is but one confession of romantic mendacity--and it shall not be made, for it _might_ have happened! Quien Sabe? And now this little story is dedicated to all who have bought or intend to buy homes, who have lost or expect to lose them; to the bird of passage and to the homing, and to all who love their fellowmen--but very especially to you who read it. H. E. W. CONTENTS PAGE DEDICATION 5 FIRST PERIOD 7 SECOND PERIOD 18 THIRD PERIOD 31 FOURTH PERIOD 42 FIFTH PERIOD 54 SIXTH PERIOD 68 SEVENTH PERIOD 90 EIGHTH PERIOD 105 NINTH PERIOD 120 TENTH PERIOD 132 ELEVENTH PERIOD 143 THE EVEN DOZENTH 155 That House I Bought FIRST PERIOD Thirty-three years ago I formed a box of blocks into a castle and then kicked it down in disgust because I didn't like the chimney. Mother said I displayed temper. Birds build nests in tree-tops with horse-hair and straw, and odd bits of stuff; but my wife and I aren't birds. Far from it. And we've been going along for fifteen years without a regular nest. All that time I've been building a house with blocks and kicking it down. The other day we went out to Mont Alto to take dinner with our friends, and on the way we saw a new house numbered "3313." The number stuck out in letters of silver, burnished into brilliancy by a noonday sun. "That's an odd number," I remarked. "Anyway you look at it, it's unlucky--3313. And I'm not superstitious." "Let's go in and examine it," she said. That's where it all started. We bought the house after dinner. It took fifteen minutes to decide, and in that time, of course, we didn't notice the place on the dining-room ceiling where the plumbing--but let it pass. The Duke of Mont Alto would fix it up. We had great faith in the Duke. The point is, we owned a house at last. That is, we had started to own it. We were tickled to death--also scared to death. There are two emotions for you, both fatal!