ed in telling him what she thought--Lord, what a thinker the little
woman was!--that she forgot to follow the subject.

Out of this life of roast lamb and lies, domesticity and evasions, the
Applebys plunged into a tremor of rebellious plotting. They sat in their
room, waiting for the Hartwigs to go to bed. Every five minutes Father
tiptoed to the door and listened.

At five minutes past ten he shook his fingers with joy. He heard the
Hartwig family discursively lumbering up to bed. He stood at the door,
unmoving, till the house was quiet, while Mother nervously hung their
farewell note on the electric light, and slipped into her overcoat and
the small black hat that was no longer new and would scarce be
impressive to Matilda Tubbs now.

They had decided to abandon the steamer-trunk, though Mother made a
bundle of the more necessary things. The second the house was quiet
Father was ready. He didn't even have to put on an overcoat--he hadn't
any worth putting on. His old overcoat had finally gone to seed and was
the chief thing abandoned with the steamer-trunk. He turned up his
coat-collar and slung his muffler about his neck, put his brown
slouch-hat impudently on one side of his white head, and stood
rejuvenated, an adventurer.

Just below their window was the roof of the low garage, which was built
as part of the house. Father opened the window, eased out the suit-case,
followed it, and gave his hand to Mother, who creakingly crawled out
with her bundle. It was an early November evening, chilly, a mist in the
air. After their day in the enervating furnace heat the breeze seemed
biting, and the garage roof was perilously slippery. Mother slid and
balanced and slid on the roof, irritably observing, "I declare to
goodness I never thought that at my time of life I'd have to sneak out
of a window on to a nasty slippery shed-roof, like a thief in the night,
when I wanted to go a-visiting."

"H'sh!" demanded Father. "They'll hear us and lug us back."

"Back nothing!" snapped Mother. "Now that I've been and gone and
actually snook out of a window and made a common gallivanting old hex
out of myself this way, I wouldn't come back not if Lulu and Harry and
that lump of a Harris Hartwig was all a-hanging on to my pettiskirts and
trying to haul me back."

"Oof-flumpf."

This last sound was made by the soft mud beside the garage as Mother
landed in it. She had jumped from the roof without once hesitating, and
she picked