The Van Dwellers: A Strenuous Quest for a Home

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Paine Albert Bigelow. The Van Dwellers: A Strenuous Quest for a Home

I. The First Home in the Metropolis

II. Metropolitan Beginnings

III. Learning by Experience

IV. Our First Move

V. A Boarding House for a Change

VI. Pursuing the Ideal

VII. Owed to the Moving Man

VIII. Household Retainers

IX. Ann

X. A "Flat" Failure

XI. Inheritance and Mania

XII. Gilded Affluence

XIII. A Home at Last

XIV. Closing Remarks

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We set out gaily and early, next morning, to buy our things.

We had brought nothing with us that could not be packed into our trunks, except my fishing rod, some inherited bedding and pictures which the Little Woman declined to part with, and two jaded and overworked dolls belonging to the Precious Ones. Manifestly this was not enough to begin housekeeping on, even in a flat of contracted floor-space and limitless improvements.

.....

As for the Precious Ones, they were wildly happy. They had never had a real playhouse before, big enough to live in, and this was quite in accordance with their ideals. They were "visiting" and "keeping store" and "cooking," and quarreling, and having a perfectly beautiful time with their two disreputable dolls, utterly regardless of the shadow of foreboding and desolation that grew ever thicker as the hours passed, while the sun slipped down behind the steep stone-battlemented park opposite, and brought no matting, no furniture, no anything that would make our little nest habitable for the swiftly coming night.

But when it became too dark for them to see to play, they came clamorously out to where we stood on the doorstep, still waiting, and demanded in one breath that we tell them immediately when the things were coming, where they were to get supper, how we were to sleep, and if they couldn't have a light.

.....