Naturally anxious to find, as quickly as possible, a less expensive dwelling-place, I showed my utter ignorance of the city by the blunder I made in joyfully engaging rooms in a quiet old-fashioned brick house because it was on Twenty-first Street and the theatre was on Twenty-fourth, and the walk would be such a short one. All good New Yorkers will know just how "short" that walk was when I add that to reach the neat little brick house I had first to cross to Second Avenue, and, alas! for me on stormy nights, there was no cross-town car, then.
However, the rooms were sunny and neatly furnished; the rent barely within my reach, but the entire Kiersted family were so unaffectedly kind and treated me so like a rather overweighted young sister that I could not have been driven away from the house with a stick. I telegraphed to mother to come. She came.
To the waiter who feeling the crown upon his brow yet treated me with almost fatherly kindness, I gave a small parting offering and my thanks; and to the chambermaid also--she with the pure complexion, bred from buttermilk and potatoes, and the brogue rich and thick enough to cut with a knife--who had "discoursed" to me at great length on religion, on her own chances of matrimony, on the general plan of the city, describing the "lay" of the diagonal avenues, their crossing streets and occasional junctures, in such confusing terms that a listening city-father would have sent out and borrowed a blind man's dog to help him find his home. Still she had talked miles a day with the best intentions, and I made my small offering to her in acknowledgment, and leaving her very red with pleasure, I departed from the hotel. That blessed evening found my mother and me house-keeping at last--_at last_! And as we sat over our tea, little Bertie, on the piano-stool at my side, ate buttered toast; then, feeling license in the air, slipped down, crept under the table, and putting beseeching small paws on mother's knee, ate more buttered toast--came back to me and the piano-stool, and bringing forth all her blandishments pleaded for a lump of sugar. She knew it was wrong, she knew _I_ knew it was wrong, but, good heavens! it was our house-warming--Bertie got the sugar. So we were settled and happily ready to begin the new life in the great strange city.