The Pleasant Street Partnership | Page 3

about the best color for
the walls, so adroitly insinuating her own ideas as to the proper stain
for the woodwork that they seemed his own.
While they talked, a small boy in a gingham apron, with a sailor hat on
the back of his curly head and a gray flannel donkey under his arm,
wandered in and stood surveying them with great composure.
"Who's going to live here?" he presently asked, his brown eyes upon
the lady.

She met his gaze with a smile that drew him a step nearer, but caused
no break in his seriousness. "I am thinking of it," she said, adding, with
a twinkle of mischief in her eyes, "if they will let me have a fireplace in
this room. Shouldn't you want a fireplace if you were going to live
here?"
He nodded, "'Cause if you didn't, Santa Claus couldn't come."
The lady turned gravely to the architect. "That is a consideration which
had not occurred to me, but it is an important one. I shall not take it
without the fireplace." Her manner said there was no need for further
discussion.
"What is your name?" she asked the small boy.
He shook his head.
"Do you mean you haven't any?"
Another more vigorous shake.
"Perhaps you have forgotten it?"
"No, I haven't."
"Why not tell, then? I am always willing to tell mine."
"What is it?" he inquired with great promptness.
"But I don't think it is fair to ask me when you won't tell yours."
"You said you would."
The lady laughed. "Very well, I am Miss Pennington."
The small boy pondered this for a moment, then announced with much
distinctness, "My name is James Mandeville Norton."
"Well, James, I am glad to meet you. I see you are a fair-minded person.

Do you live in this neighborhood?"
James Mandeville pointed in the direction of the row of toy houses on
Pleasant Street, and said he lived over there.
"Then if they give me a fireplace, you and I will be neighbors."
They were standing in the door, just outside which, on the sidewalk,
was a velocipede. This James Mandeville now mounted with gravity.
He did not express a hope that she might come to live near him, but
there was friendliness in the tone in which he said good-by as he rode
away.
"Good-by Infinitesimal James," replied the lady.
"My name's James Mandeville," he called back.
In the course of a day or two the matter of the fireplace was adjusted
and the lease signed. Norah Pennington was the tenant's name, and her
references all the most timorous landlord could ask.
On the afternoon of the day on which the transaction was closed Miss
Pennington might have been seen walking along the Terrace, gazing
about with interested eyes.
"What dear old houses," she said to herself. "I am sure Marion will like
it here. This might be Doubting Castle, and there is Palace Beautiful, a
little out of repair."
She stood for a moment on the corner in the full blaze of the summer
sun. The happy courage of youth seemed to radiate from her. There was
a vitality, a sparkle in her glance, in the waves of her sunny hair, in her
smile, as with a slight gesture that embraced the Terrace, and Pleasant
Street, too, she said half aloud, "Good-by till September."
CHAPTER SECOND
WHAT SHALL WE CALL IT?

"And now what shall we call it?" Norah asked.
"Call it?" echoed Marion.
They sat on the rocks beside a mountain stream that filled the air with
its delicious murmur.
"Certainly, everything has to have a name. Shall it be Carpenter and
Pennington, Dry-goods?"
Marion removed the dark glasses she wore, turning a pair of serious
eyes upon her companion. "How absurd," she said.
"No," insisted Norah, taking the glasses and adjusting them on her own
nose, "not at all. It is businesslike. Can't you see it?--a large black sign
with gilt letters."
"Give me my glasses, and don't be silly. It is not to be a dry-goods'
store in the first place, and above all things let us be original. If such
signs are customary, ours must be different."
"Here speaks wisdom. Here the instinct of the born advertiser betrays
itself. Let us think." Norah buried her face in her hands.
Marion watched her with a half smile, then as an expression of
weariness stole into her face she restored the glasses and sighed, as
with her elbow supported on a ledge of rock she rested her chin in her
palm and looked down on the swift running water. She was extremely
slender, and it was easy to guess she was also tall, and that, seen at her
best, she was a person of grace and elegance rather than beauty.
"I have