"Go
ahead, _I_ don't care." He parted from his old home with as much
indifference as he had parted from his block in the Mission.
Vandover signed the deed that made him homeless, and at about the same
time the first payment was made. Ten thousand dollars was deposited in
one of the banks to his credit, and a check sent to him for the amount.
The very next day Vandover drew against it for five hundred dollars.
At one time he had had an ambition to buy back his furniture from the
huge apartment house in which he had formerly lived, and with it to make
his cheerless bedroom in the Lick House seem more like a home. He felt
it almost as a dishonour to have strangers using this furniture, sitting
in the great leather chair in which the Old Gentleman had died, staring
stupidly at his Renaissance portraits and copies of Assyrian
_bas-reliefs_. Above all, it was torture to think that other hands than
his own would tend the famous tiled and flamboyant stove, a stove that
had its moods, its caprices, like any living person, a stove that had to
be coaxed and humoured, a stove that he alone could understand.
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