He was eager to get settled.  The idea of taking rooms that should be all his own and that he could fit up to suit his taste attracted him immensely.  Already he saw himself installed in charming bachelor’s apartments, the walls covered with rough stone-blue paper forming an admirable background for small plaster casts of Assyrian bas-reliefs and photogravures of Velasquez portraits.  There would be a pipe-rack over the mantelpiece, and a window-seat with a corduroy cushion such as he had had in his room in Matthew’s.

Very slowly his father’s affairs were settled, and by degrees the estate began to adjust itself to the new grooves in which it was to run.  By the middle of December everything was beginning to go smoothly, and the day before Christmas Mr. Field announced to Vandover that he had invested his eighty-nine hundred in registered U.S. 4 per cents.  They had had several long talks concerning this sum of money, and in the end had concluded that it would be better to invest it in some such fashion rather than to take up any of the mortgages that were on the houses.

During the first weeks of the new year the house on California Street was rented for one hundred and twenty-five dollars to an English gentleman, the president of a fruit syndicate in the southern part of the state.  There were but three in the family, and though the rent was below that which Vandover had desired, Brunt advised him to close the transaction at once, as they were desirable tenants and would probably stay in the house a long time.

On the last evening which he was to spend in his home, Vandover cast up his accounts and made out a schedule as to his monthly income.

Rent from realty, net average $ 84.00
Rent from homestead property on California Street 125.00
Interest on U.S. bonds, 4 per cent. 23.00
_______
Total $232.00
In small iron safe $170.00
Received from sale of office effects $500.00
_______
$670.00
Expenses, outstanding bills, lawyer’s fees, undertaker’s
bill, expenses for collecting, etc 587.00
_______
Balance, January 16th $83.00

Then with a shrug of the shoulders he dismissed the whole burdensome business from his mind.  Brunt would manage his property, sending him regularly the monthly statement in order to keep him informed.  The English gentleman of the fruit syndicate would add his hundred and twenty-five, and the 4 per cents., faithfully brooding over his eighty-nine hundred in the dark of the safety deposit drawer, would bring forth their little quota of twenty-three with absolute certainty.  Two thirty-two a month.  Yes, he was comfortably fixed and was free now to do exactly as he pleased.