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"We must move," said Aunt Mathilda firmly. Molly and I looked at each other sorrowfully. We knew the decision was irrevocable. It was the Artist's fault. He had come to live next door some six months before and Aunt Mathilda said that ever since, he had lent an air of hopeless extravagance to the street, which she for one would not countenance by remaining on it.

The Artist's cook told Katie, our one maid-of-all-work, that he opened champagne every evening for dinner-and Katie guilelessly repeated this information to Aunt Mathilda. Now we never indulged in anything but grape juice, and that on state occasions only, so the effect of Katie's piece of gossip was about the same on Aunt Mathilda as if she had told her that the Artist consumed two quarts of whiskey every hour during the day, with an extra allowance for Sunday.

Then the Artist's pretty little girl ran up a bill at the corner drug store of sixteen dollars for soda water. It happened this way. The Artist's wife told the clerk in the store to charge any soda water which her little girl wanted. The other children in the neighborhood soon found this out, and in large crowds prevailed on the child to treat them to their favorite beverage. Rumor had it that the Artist laughed when the bill was presented. "He laughed," said Aunt Mathilda, "but I notice he didn't pay it. Perfectly outrageous!"

Molly and I didn't say anything but we secretly thought it was perfectly lovely. We didn't get much soda water, you see. We regretted, I remember, that we were not the age of the little girl-perhaps she would have treated us, too. Molly was fourteen and I was a year younger. The Artist's little girl was just six.

The Artist entertained a great deal. Such dinners as he gave! Molly and I used to hide in the pantry and listen while his cook told Katie about them-twelve courses-we could hardly believe it. Aunt Mathilda said it was a sinful waste of time, money and food.

Molly and I used to stand at the parlor windows and watch the people who came to these dinners. Such pretty ladies, in wonderful gowns, such handsome gentlemen. One young lady came often. To Molly and me she was the ideal of everything that was beautiful. We called her the "Princess," and many an exciting chapter of romance did we weave about her-Molly and I had read some novels, when Aunt Mathilda was not at home. We made up stories about all the people who came next door, and told them to each other, but the "Princess" was ever our favorite. The tales about her were sure to end with her happy marriage to the young man who sometimes came with her, and who had the remarkable hat which closed up with a snap by means of some hidden spring. It seemed only fitting that a magician should marry the "Princess."

Whenever Aunt Mathilda saw us at the window, she would say sternly, "Come right away, girls, don't look at those people. I can't approve of them or their ways."

"Why, Aunt Mathilda," said Molly once. "They're just Bohemian." She had read the word "Bohemian" in a book; she didn't know exactly what it meant, but it sounded so well. "Pooh," replied Aunt Mathilda, "they're just outlandish. They don't wear any sleeves in their dresses-nor any yokes either."

Then it was that Aunt Mathilda, incensed at the very thought of living next door to a house where sleeveless dresses held carnival, decided that we must move. Molly and I were sure there was no escape. We would never see the "Princess" again. We would never find such another neighbor as the Artist. Though to be exact we weren't very neighborly with the Artist and his family. Aunt Mathilda had called once on the Artist's wife when the latter first arrived. The Artist's wife had returned the call, and while she and Aunt Mathilda were vainly attempting to find some common topic of interest, Molly and I leaned over the banister and counted the rows of insertion on the back of her dress.

"Twelve," said Molly breathlessly, "One for every course at the dinners."

After this call, during which Aunt Mathilda happened to remark that she considered the Artist's little girl "real pretty" the Artist's wife sent over six photographs of the little girl. Aunt Mathilda, thinking that she was merely to make a selection, picked out the least fancy of the pictures and sent back the other five. It developed later that the gift consisted of the entire six.

This fact on their side, and Aunt Mathilda's constantly increasing disapproval on ours, occasioned strained relations between the families. But now alas! we were to move, so it didn't matter.

Aunt Mathilda consulted the newspapers industriously and visited all the vacant houses in town. Then she decided on a house which was only three blocks distant, but which was piously located between a minister's family and the president of the "Blind Girls Home." The house wasn't as pretty or as comfortable as the one we were in, but Aunt Mathilda was so delighted over the neighborhood that she lost no time in getting ready to move at once.

Oh! what a time we had. I never thought before that we were much blessed with this world's goods, but it seemed that we were, for I have never seen such an amount of stuff as came to light in the next few days. Old furniture from the attic, old pots and pans from the basement, old clothes from Aunt Mathilda's closet. Everything was old. The cabinet was our one new possession and Molly and I fondly hoped that our new neighbors would look out of their windows only when that was carried into our new abode. Aunt Mathilda packed all her small possessions in band-boxes, and piled them high, one on top of another, and tied them together. You can imagine that eight band-boxes made something of a column.

Then were summoned three negroes and a moving van, and by means of these our Lares and Penates were roughly transferred. Molly and I stood on the porch of the new house and told the men where to put each article of furniture. They didn't understand us very well, I guess, because they hardly got anything in the right place. Aunt Mathilda didn't like it one bit when she found her feather bed in the kitchen, and the collection of books which had belonged to her father upstairs in Katie's room on the third floor. Then they stored the refrigerator in the garret. I don't wonder they took it for an antique. Of course the neighbors all did look out of the windows when the battered up furniture arrived, but Molly and I consoled ourselves with the thought of the cabinet. But when it did come, on account of a sudden shower, the men put a dirty piece of canvas over it and carried it in that way. That was a great blow to Molly and me. I saw the president of the "Blind Girls Home" half hidden by her curtain, smile as a pyramid of band-boxes came around the corner, with apparently no means of locomotion. The stalwart darkey was quite hidden behind them. They couldn't go in the van without being untied, and as Aunt Mathilda wouldn't hear of that, the darkey had carried them around.

A single exciting event occurred in the course of the move. Now Aunt Mathilda, though it is hard to believe, had one weakness. This was in the shape of two plaster casts of that variety more prevalent now than then, one of a lion and the other of a lioness. Why she had such a fancy for them we never knew. "I think," Molly had said once, that a long time ago maybe she had a lover who took her to visit a Zoo.”

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"Molly, you would make up a love story out of a block of

wood," said I, with no conscious disparagement of Aunt Mathilda.

However it was, Aunt Mathilda would suffer no alien hand to move her favorites.

"I'll just carry them over myself," she said to the men. "The president of the Blind Girl's Home' will see you surely," said Molly, somewhat mischievously.

"That makes no difference," said Aunt Mathilda coldly. Perhaps it did not, but Aunt Mathilda went up the back way through the alley. She explained afterwards that as our house was only one from the corner it seemed shorter to go that way with those heavy beasts. When Aunt Mathilda got to the back gate, she found it was locked. So she put the lions down gently through a hole in the fence and went around and got in through the front door. She started at once after her treasures, but they were gone. They had not left so much as a single track in the dust.

That was the only time I ever saw Aunt Mathilda lose her self-control. She peered up and down the alley and ran to look in the coal bin. She scolded Katie. She turned fiercely on Molly and me, and demanded to know whether we had hidden them. Hidden them! We were too amazed to be indignant. We had never cared to play with fire sufficiently to hide those sacred quadrupeds. Our sympathies were finally aroused to such an extent that we started on our first and only lion hunt. Over in a vacant lot which opened off the alley, we saw three little ragged boys playing. They were cheering and hooting. Molly and I went up quietly behind them. Yes, those dirty little boys were playing menagerie with Aunt Mathilda's lions. They had put sticks in their mouths and were irreverently whipping them up. The rascals had seen Aunt Mathilda put the lions in the hole and had proceeded to purloin them. Molly and I took them away by force and carried them to the new house. Aunt Mathilda went right out to lecture the little boys, but they were nowhere to be found. A great chip was knocked off the lion's mane-awful desecration-and he ever afterwards had to stand with that side next to the wall.

The next day, while our household goods were in a hopelessly chaotic condition, Molly picked up a newspaper, and exclaimed excitedly, "Just listen to this. The Artist's gone. This says, 'He departed suddenly with his family. No one knows where.

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