Page:The lady or the tiger and other stories, Stockton (Scribner's 1897 ed).djvu/196

186 and I can always tell them what I meant the inscription to mean. The "y" and the"gli" are real Italian and I will not attempt to translate them—but they look well and give an air of proper construction to the whole. I might have written the thing in Old English, but that is harder for me than Italian. The translation, which is my own, I tried to make, as nearly as possible, consistent with Dante's poem.

A few days after this I went over to Tom's house. A brighter, cosier house you never saw. I threw myself into one of my ex-arm-chairs. I lay back; I stretched out my legs under a table,—I could never stretch out my legs under one of my own tables because they had heavy Eastlake bars under them, and you had to sit up and keep your legs at an Eastlake angle. I drew a long sigh of satisfaction. Around me were all the pretty, tasteful, unsuitable things that Tom had bought from us—at eighty-seven per cent off. Our own old spirit of home comfort seemed to be here. I sprang from my chair.

"Tom," I cried, "what will you take for this house, this furniture—every thing just as it stands?"

Tom named a sum. I closed the bargain.

We live in Tom's house now, and two happier people are not easily found. Tom wanted me to sell him my re-modelled house, but I wouldn't do it. He would alter things. I rent it to him; and he has to live there, for he can get no other house in the neighborhood. He is not the cheerful fellow he used to be, but his wife comes over to see us very often.