Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/192

180 There were difficulties, but he overcame them all. No carpets went with the $129 flat; he paid extra for them and got a superb design of yellow flowers, as big as pumpkins, on a flaming scarlet ground. There was a cotton-batting "down comfortable" on the bed, but no sheets or blankets; he bought them wholesale on the lower floors. If there was anything he seemed likely to forget, the salesman tactfully reminded him. He hired Mittelbaum Schwarz's official carpet-layer to help him move in; and having paid $25 on account and signed an agreement to pay $2 a week thereafter, he took his center-table in one hand and his parlor lamp in the other and led a procession of employees with chairs, tables, pillows, and tinware to his truck.

"Shake yerselves, now, boys," he said. "I ain't got all day on this job."

They shook themselves. By midday, the parlor carpet was laid; a green matting was down in the dining-room; the ten yards of oilcloth adorned the kitchen; and Carney, standing in the disorder of the bedroom where all the furniture was piled, smiled around him on the beginnings of his happiness—and felt hungry. It reminded him that his team had not been fed.

He was alone in his own house all afternoon, putting things to rights. The front room was easily arranged, because he remembered exactly how it had been set up in the furniture store; but the bedroom gave him a bad half-hour. The side pieces of the bed did not fit the ends; the brass ball-trimmings came off in his impatient grip; the pillows would not go into their slips until