They lived in one side of a two-family house next to Friend’s Grocery Store, after the summer at Grandma’s and Aunt Lois’s house. Often the children walked past the Furness mansion on Main Boulevard and pretended they lived there just as their father had promised. The big house was empty and they could stroll around the orchard, and even peek through windows of the buildings, unless the old caretaker happened to be around. Through the bars of the cellar windows they could see the basement bowling alley, and back of that the greenhouse with broken panes and cracked flowerpots with dead ferns, for no one had lived in the place since old Mrs. Furness had died. They took their shoes off and went wading on the porch, for the rain leaked through the roof to make delicious puddles and a wading pool of the garden fountain. The great overgrown lawn was a treasure of four-leaf clovers, mole cellars, garter snakes, and hoary dandelions to be blown away in a wish. This was their real home, because their father had said so, and any other place was only marking time.

“It’s a good thing I decided not to take the Furness place,” their father said to their mother. “I understand the heater used to eat up ten tons of coals a season, and with the laundry in the basement you’d be running up and down those stairs every minute. I’m mighty glad I thought it over again.”

“Oh, darling, you know we couldn’t—ever!” their mother gently protested. “I can’t understand your even thinking about it.”

But this lack of faith always made their father mad. He was often cross nowadays, and always tired out. Their mother was always shushing them with “Papa has a lot on his mind at his new job, so do be quiet.” There were many nights when Aunt Lois and Grandma came in for what seemed to be a very grave family conference. The children were sent to bed early, but they could hear their father’s voice get higher and higher, shouting down Aunt Lois’s tense quick words. The nursery was over the living room and by peeking down the open register the girls could see the grown-ups and hear them without actually understanding what these meetings were all about, except that Papa seemed to be the center of them, both leader and victim. Mama sometimes cried, and Grandma’s only contribution seemed as moderator, clucking out a “Now, now, there’s more to it than that!” Papa usually shouted out the same answers every time. If a fellow had brains there was no sense in his working in a furniture factory for a foreman that didn’t even speak English, he said. “I got brains. I got a personality. Carson’s a mighty smart man. He’s the boss and he knows what’s what. If the boss thinks I got the personality for the road, I don’t see what you women have to kick about, trying to hold me back.” The arguments often had their start before Papa’s arrival, with Mama complaining to her mother and sister about something Papa was threatening to do. But as soon as they offered advice and sympathy, Mama went over to Papa’s side. By the end of the evening Grandma and Aunt Lois went home annoyed and baffled, and through the register the children could see Mama tenderly embracing Papa, saying, “I know they’re my folks, Harry, and they mean a lot to me, but they’ve no right to criticize you.”