Besides looking at the house we asked the usual house-hunting questions.  Mr. Sinclair was in the city.  He wanted to sell because he was going to Europe in the spring to educate his children.  He would sell his place for $10,000 or rent it for $800.  For the summer?  No! for the year.  He did not care to rent it for the summer, nor to give possession before fall.  Would he rent the furniture?  Yes, if one wanted it.  But that would be extra.  How much land was there?  About two acres.  Any fruit?  Pears, peaches, and the smaller fruits—­strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries.  Whereupon Jennie and I bowed ourselves out and went away.

And nothing more was said about it till the next February.  The diplomate still kept her own counsel.

Then I opened the subject.  It was the evening of the first day of February.  I had been in to pay my rent.  “Jennie,” said I, “the landlord raises our rent to $2,500.

“What are you going to do?” said she quietly; “pay it?”

“Pay it!” said I.  “No.  It’s high at $2,000.—­We shall have to move.”

“Where to?” said Jennie.

I shrugged my shoulders.  I had not the least idea.

“What are you going to do next summer?” said she.

“Glen-Ridge?” said I interrogatively.

“I am afraid I shall have to be in my own home next summer,” said Jennie.  “The mother cannot leave her nest to find a home among strangers when God sends her a little bird to be watched and tended.  And I hope, John, God is going to send another little bird to our nest this summer.”

“You shall have your own home, Jennie dear,” said I.  “I will tell the landlord to-morrow that we will keep it.  But it is an imposition.”

“I am so sorry to give up our summer at Wheathedge,” said she.  “We did enjoy ourselves so much, John, and Harry grew and thrived so.”

“It can’t be helped, Jennie,” said I.

“No”—­said she slowly, and as if thinking to herself; “no—­unless we took the Sinclair cottage for the summer.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said I.

“What was the rent?” asked the diplomate.  She knew as well as I did.

“Eight hundred dollars a year,” said I.

“That is a clear saving of $1,700 a year,” said Jennie.

“That’s a fact,” said I.

“If we did not like it we could come back to the city in the fall, and get a house here; if we did we could stay later and come in to board for three or four months.  I shouldn’t mind if we did not come at all.”

“No country in the winter for me, thank you,” said I; “with the wind drawing through the open cracks in your country built house half freezing you, and when you try to keep warm your air-tight stove half suffocating you; with the roads outside blocked up with great drifts, and the trains delayed just on the days when I have a critical case in court.”

“Very well,” said Jennie.  She is too much of a diplomate to argue.  “When the snow comes we can easily move back again, as easily as find a new house now.  To tell the truth, John, I have no heart for house-hunting now.”