window mouldings with a piercing eye, his
arms folded.

"I see, I see," he answered to Laura's explanations. "I see. Now
where's a screw-driver, and a step-ladder? Yes, and I'll have to have
some brass nails, and your hired man must let me have that hammer
again."

He sent the cook after the screw-driver, called the hired man from the
furnace, shouted upstairs to Page to ask for the whereabouts of the
brass nails, and delegated Laura to steady the step-ladder.

"Now, Landry," directed Laura, "those rods want to be about three
inches from the top."

"Well," he said, climbing up, "I'll mark the place with the screw and
you tell me if it is right."

She stepped back, her head to one side.

"No; higher, Landry. There, that's about it--or a _little_ lower--so.
That's just right. Come down now and help me put the hooks in."

They pulled a number of sofa cushions together and sat down on the
floor side by side, Landry snapping the hooks in place where Laura had
gathered the pleats. Inevitably his hands touched hers, and their heads
drew close together. Page and Mrs. Wessels were unpacking linen in the
upstairs hall. The cook and hired man raised a great noise of clanking
stove lids and grates as they wrestled with the range in the kitchen.

"Well," said Landry, "you are going to have a pretty home." He was
meditating a phrase of which he purposed delivering himself when
opportunity afforded. It had to do with Laura's eyes, and her ability
of understanding him. She understood him; she was to know that he
thought so, that it was of immense importance to him. It was thus he
conceived of the manner of love making. The evening before that
palavering artist seemed to have managed to monopolise her about all of
the time. Now it was his turn, and this day of household affairs, of
little domestic commotions, appeared to him to be infinitely more
desirous than the pomp and formality of evening dress and opera boxes.
This morning the relations between himself and Laura seemed charming,
intimate, unconventional, and full of opportunities. Never had she
appeared prettier to him. She wore a little pink flannel dressing-sack
with full sleeves, and her hair, carelessly twisted into great piles,
was in a beautiful disarray, curling about her cheeks and ears. "I
didn't see anything of you at all last night," he grumbled.

"Well, you didn't try."

"Oh, it was the Other Fellow's turn," he went on. "Say," he added, "how
often are you