At first she had been rather afraid of the expenditure the purchase of a house involved. It sounded to her too much like the large and not very practical ideas of her father. But when Archie pointed out to her that even day laborers managed to own their cottages, thanks to building-associations, and that purchase on this plan was merely a way of saving money, she yielded without undue reluctance. After all, there was not only his salary to be relied upon, but his commissions, dependent upon his own energy, which seemed boundless. Like many poor girls, she was quite ignorant of the value of money. Beyond the purchasing power of a concrete sum, say one thousand dollars, money meant nothing to her at all. Ten thousand dollars, twenty thousand dollars--they seemed very much the same. The house was its own best advocate; one of the charming English cottage types that are beginning to make home life not only comfortable but dignified for the small householder in our American cities. The neighborhood was excellent, one of the pretty green courts she had long ago coveted; and there was a small garden artfully arranged into vistas and quite an air of privacy by means of shrubbery, and overlooked by a secluded porch whose coolness seemed like paradise to Archie, hurrying to it out of the hot city. The garden was his part of the establishment; and there he might be observed any morning shortly after sunrise, digging, pruning, whistling tunelessly between his teeth, with one eye on a window whence would presently issue the drowsy voice of Joan, calling, "Good-morning out there, Adam!" Then with a rush Adam would disappear from his garden, leaving spade or hose where he happened to drop them, lest Eve need assistance with buttoning a blouse or tying a shoe. It was a glorious time for Archie. He was almost painfully happy. The Jabberwocks and others took a good deal of critical interest in Joan's house. She had always been suspected of being a little odd, and her house proved it indubitably. At a period when Louisville was graduating out of the green-wall-and-mission-furniture period, through Coloniality, into a more catholic appreciation of possessions which express the personality of the possessor, Joan's house was still rather a shock to all preconceived notions of decoration. There was none of the white woodwork and panelled severity which sounded the correct and most recent note. Joan's woodwork and walls were alike a soft, practical gray--"Soot-color," she explained placidly--and the plaster had been left rough-cast. Against it, instead of the accepted pictures of the day, hung two or three rare prints, a cast of the Parthenon frieze, and a fine strip of Persian embroidery. On the floor were black skin rugs. A green vine, growing out of an ancient yellowed marble jar, wandered at will across one wall and up the brick of the chimney-place. "You got that idea in Italy," commented one visitor.