The Frontier

This House To Let.

HERE it was, most unquestionably.. in fact, black letters.
"This house to let-and no mistake about it, either" mused Mr. Briggs, stirring his cup of cold coffee and looking distastefully at the one boiled egg that lay before him. "The fact is, I'm sick of keeping house, coal always out, taxes always due. I won't stand it any longer."

He turned a lively scarlet as the door slowly swung open and his housekeeper stalked majestically in.
In fact, Mr. Briggs was a little afraid of Mrs. Parley, but Mr. Briggs was resolved to break the baleful spell.

"Mr. Briggs!" began the lady, solemnly, "can I believe my eyes?"
"Well, ma'am," said the old bachelor, "I never heard that anything was amiss with your eyesight."
"Is it possible that you have posted a bill on the front of this house without consulting me?"
"Quite so, ma'am," responded Nahum.
"And you intend-"
"To shut up shop -to close the establishment--to break up housekeeping." said Nahum.
"That's exactly my intention."

Very well, sir," said Mrs. Parley, grimly. "If you will settle the trifling question of salary between us, I will take my departure."

Mrs. Parley withdrew, and Nahum was left to his own meditations. They took the shape of a species of war dance, executed in the middle of the floor.
"Bravo! bravo! three cheers and a tiger!" chuckled our hero. "If ever there was a miserable slave I've been one to that hatchet faced old woman, and now I'm free."

He stopped abruptly; there was a ring at the door bell.

A spectacled old lady stood on the doorsteps, in a shabby bombazine and furs that looked as if they might have grown on the back of some dissipated cat.
"This 'ere house to let?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Water pipes in order? Cellar dry? Paint new? Furnace work good? Roof sound? Chandeliers go with the house? Possession right off? Neighborhood good? Methodist church anywhere near? Any objection to children? Ventilators in the rooms? Cheery closets off the dining room?"
"Ma'am!" ejaculated poor Nahum, fairly stunned by the torrent of questions.
"What's the rent?"
"Twelve hundred dollars."
"Twelve hundred fiddlesticks" shrieked the old lady. "Why, you must be crazy. Say $900, and I'll look at the rooms."
"I won't say anything of the sort."
So saying, Nahum Briggs closed the door in the face of the old lady with the furs.

WITH THE PRIVILEGE OF KEEPING JUST ONE BOARDER

Scarcely had the old lady got safely round the corner and Mr. Briggs recovered his ruffled faculties, when there came another sharp tintinnabulation of the bell-a languid young lady this time, with a stiff looking gentleman, who appeared engaged in holding on his mustache. With this couple Mr. Nahum trotted to the very top of the house and down again.
"Adolphus, my dear," said the lady.
"Well, my dear?"
"Don't you think these ceilings are very low? And then the back yard is so very small. And the dining room is so inconvenient. And-I'm really afraid there are obnoxious insects in the bedrooms."
"Really, ma'am" said Nahum. bristling up, "is there any other fault to find? Because, if there isn't, there's the front door."

Two young damsels and a spinster aunt followed, and after a lengthy inspection of the premises came to a state council in the parlors.
"I like the house very much," said the spinster aunt, solemnly, "and with a few slight alterations I will engage it for my brother's family."
"Very good, ma'am." said Nahum, rubbing his hands and scenting a speedy termination to his trials.
"Name 'em."
"The door handles must be all gilded, and I should like the house new papered and repainted and the partition between the parlors taken down and replaced by an arch, and an extension dining room built out behind, and a bay window thrown out of the parlor, and a new style of range in the kitchen, and dumb waiter put in, and new bronze chandeliers throughout, and another furnace in the sub-cellar, and-"
"Hold on, ma'am--just hold on one minute," said Nahum, gasping for breath. "Wouldn't you like the old house carried away and a new one put in its place? I think it would be rather less trouble than to make the trifling alterations you suggest."

With prim dignity the lady marshaled her two charges out, muttering something about "the extortionate ideas of some landlords nowadays."

Another lady, but quite different from the other--a slender, little, cast down lady, with a head that drooped like a lily of the valley, and a dress of brown silk that had been mended and darned and turned and returned, until even Nahum Briggs, man and bachelor though he was, could see how very poor it was.

Yet she was pretty, with big, blue eyes and shining brown hair, and cheeks tinged with a faint, fleeting color, where the velvety roses of youth had once bloomed in vivid carmine.

And the golden haired little lassies who clung to her dress were as like her as tiny lily buds to full bloomed flower bells.

As Nahum Briggs stood looking at her there came back to him the sunshiny days of his youth-a field of clover and a blue-eyed girl leaning over the fence, with her bright hair barred with sunset gold, and he knew that he was standing face to face with the girl whose blue eyes had kept him an old bachelor all his life long.

"This house is to let, I believe," she asked, timidly.
"I believe it is, Barbara Wylie."
She looked up, starting with a sudden flush of recognition.
"If you please, Mr. Briggs. I will look at the house. I am a widow now, and very poor, and -and I think of keeping a boarding house to earn my bread. I hope the rent is not very high."
"We'll talk about the rent afterward, " said Nahum, swallowing a big lump in his throat. "Come here, little girls, and kiss me; I used to know your mamma when she wasn't much bigger than you are."

Barbara, with her blue eyes still drooping, went all over the house without finding a word of fault, and Nahum Briggs walked at her side, wondering if it was really fifteen years since the June sunshine lay so brightly on the clover field.

"I think the house is beautiful," said meek Barbara.
"Will you rent it to me?"
"Well, yes," said Nahum. thoughtfully. "I'll let you have the house if you want it, Barbara.
"With the privilege of keeping a few boarders?"
"No!"

Barbara stopped and looked wistfully at him.
"But I don't think you understand how very poor I am, Mr. Briggs."
"I'll tell you what, Barbara," said Mr. Briggs, dictatorially, "I'll give you the privilege of keeping just one boarder, and him you've got to keep all your life if you once take him."
"I don't think I quite understand you, Mr. Briggs." said Barbara. But one is rather inclined to think she told a little fib.

…What do you say to me for a boarder, Barbara?" said the old bachelor, taking both the widow's hands in his. "Barbara, I'll do my best to be a good husband to you if you'll be my wife."

Barbara blushed again and hesitated, but Nahum was not to be eluded.
"Shall I take down the 'to let,' Barbara?"
"Yes," she murmured, almost under her breath.
"And when shall we be married, Barbara?"
"In the summer, perhaps," said Mrs. Barbara, shyly.
"To-morrow," said Nahum, decisively: and "to-morrow" it was.

The probabilities are that neither Mr. Nahum Briggs nor his brown stone house will be in the market again "to let." Boston Globe.