McGraw©Hill/Focus/Home p.553////R7N33 ***** What had been wanted was this always, this always to last,

the talking softly on this porch, with the snake plant in the

jardiniere in the southwest corner, and the obstinate slip from

Aunt Eppie's magnificent Michigan fern at the left side of the

friendly door. Mama, Maud Martha and Helen rocked slowly in

their rocking chairs, and looked at the late afternoon light on

the lawn, and at the emphatic iron of the fence and at the poplar

tree. These things might soon be theirs no longer. Those shafts

and pools of light, the tree, the graceful iron, might soon be

viewed possessively by different eyes. Papa was to have gone that noon, during his lunch hour, to

the office of Home Owners'Loan. If he had not succeeded in

getting another extension, they would be leaving this house in

which they had lived for more than fourteen years. There was

little hope. The Home Owners' Loan was hard. They sat, making

their plans. "We'll be moving into a nice flat somewhere," said Mama.

"Somewhere on South Park, or Michigan, or in Wasington Park

Court." Those flats, as the girls and Mama knew well were

burdens on wages twice the size of Papa's. This was not

mentioned now. "They're much prettier than this old house," said Helen.

"I have friends I'd just as soon not bring here. And I have

other friends that wouldn't come down this far for anything,

unless they were in a tazi." Yesterday, Maud Martha would have attacked her.