her two nieces. Pending the installation Laura
and Page lived at a little family hotel in the same neighbourhood. The
Cresslers' invitation to join the theatre party at the Auditorium had
fallen inopportunely enough, squarely in the midst of the ordeal of
moving in. Indeed the two girls had already passed one night in the new
home, and they must dress for the affair by lamplight in their
unfurnished quarters and under inconceivable difficulties. Only the
lure of Italian opera, heard from a box, could have tempted them to
have accepted the invitation at such a time and under such
circumstances.

The morning after the opera, Laura woke in her bed--almost the only
article of furniture that was in place in the whole house--with the
depressing consciousness of a hard day's work at hand. Outside it was
still raining, the room was cold, heated only by an inadequate oil
stove, and through the slats of the inside shutters, which, pending the
hanging of the curtains they had been obliged to close, was filtering a
gloomy light of a wet Chicago morning.

It was all very mournful, and she regretted now that she had not abided
by her original decision to remain at the hotel until the new house was
ready for occupancy. But it had happened that their month at the hotel
was just up, and rather than engage the rooms for another four weeks
she had thought it easier as well as cheaper to come to the house. It
was all a new experience for her, and she had imagined that everything
could be moved in, put in place, and the household running smoothly in
a week's time.

She sat up in bed, hugging her shoulders against the chill of the room
and looking at her theatre gown, that--in default of a clean
closet--she had hung from the gas fixture the night before. From the
direction of the kitchen came the sounds of the newly engaged "girl"
making the fire for breakfast, while through the register a thin wisp
of blue smoke curled upward to prove that the "hired man" was tinkering
with the unused furnace. The room itself was in lamentable confusion.
Crates and packing boxes encumbered the uncarpeted floor; chairs
wrapped in excelsior and jute were piled one upon another; a roll of
carpet leaned in one corner and a pile of mattresses occupied another.

As Laura considered the prospect she realised her blunder.

"Why, and oh, why," she murmured, "didn't we stay at the hotel till all
this was straightened out?"

But in an adjoining room she heard