Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/14

Rh answer, but you want everything. I believe the small conveniences you have on this list come to more money than the furniture and carpets."

"Oh, yes," said I. "We are not so very particular about furniture and carpets, but these little conveniences are the things that make house-keeping pleasant and—speaking from a common-sense point of view—profitable."

"That may be," he answered; "but I can't afford to make matters pleasant and profitable for you in that way. Now, then, let us look at one or two particulars. Here, on your list, is an ice-pick: twenty-five cents. Now, if I buy that ice-pick, and rent it to you at two and a half cents a year, I shall not get my money back unless it lasts you ten years. And even then, as it is not probable that I can sell the ice-pick after you have used it for ten years, I shall have made nothing at all by my bargain. And there are other things in that list, such as feather-dusters and lamp-chimneys, that couldn't possibly last ten years. Don't you see my position? "

I saw it. We did not get that furnished house. Euphemia was greatly disappointed.

"It would have been just splendid," she said, "to have taken our book and have ordered all these things at the stores, one after another, without even being obliged to ask the price."

I had my private doubts in regard to this matter of price. I am afraid that Euphemia generally set down the lowest price and the best things. She did not mean to mislead, and our plan certainly made our book attractive. But it did not work very well in practice. We have a friend who undertook to furnish her house by our book, and she never could get the things as cheaply as we had them quoted.