And about this time Our banker moved away and left his house For sale at public auction. I went down Alone, not telling her, to look at it. Here was a house upon a stone foundation Built of red brick, peaked roof of slate, three stories, Brick walks about the yard with plots of flowers, A barn of brick--it was the very place! There now were grandchildren; and so I dreamed How they would romp about this lovely yard, Or play on rainy days in that wide garret. And so I bid and got the house at auction. But when I told her she was up in arms: The house would hold a family of ten! Besides the upper rooms were far too small: What is a dining room, or huge drawing room If you step out of bed against the wall? Then there’s that gully just below the barn Breeding malaria, the banker’s family Were sick year in and out--that’s why they sold it For anything at public sale. O fool! Well, Mary came that summer with her children, And my poor dream in part was realized. But Frank and Bessie moved to California And never saw the happiness I planned For them and for their children. Mary’s husband Disliked the house--his hatred was beginning. Next summer Mary left him and divorced him, And started out to earn her children’s bread. She didn’t come again. And so it was true, We didn’t need so large a house--we sold it And bought a cottage of six rooms; this time She joined with me in picking out the house, But that was nothing, for no other house Besides this one was up for sale just then. No sooner had we moved than she was full Of wounded memory and a mad regret: She saw what she had lost. These little rooms! This front fence almost jammed against the door! And stoves again instead of radiators! No running water, only an old pump Above the kitchen sink! And near the station-- The bawling bussmen bothered her at night! The midnight train woke her unfailingly. And now she said our first house was all right With this, or that corrected. We had blundered In ever selling it and taking on Such luxury in the brick house. It had spoiled Her taste for living in a house like this, With just a little yard, that hideous fence, Which one could touch while standing in the door! She said she could not breathe because of it, And railed against her fate so that it brought The next step in my life of buying houses....