know. Ouija
stuff.

And sure enough, the blamed truck turns into our driveway. By the time
I arrives the man has just unloaded two wardrobe trunks and a hat box.
And in the livin' room I finds Auntie.

"Eh?" says I, starin'. "Why, I--I thought you was----"

"How cordial!" says Auntie.

"Yes," says I, catchin' my breath quick. "Isn't it perfectly bully that
you could come? We was afraid you'd be havin' such a good time in town
that we couldn't----"

"And so I was, until last night," says Auntie. "Verona, will tell you
all about it, I've no doubt."

Oh yes, Vee does. She unloads it durin' a little stroll we took out
towards the garden. New York hadn't been behavin' well towards Auntie.
Not at all well. Just got on one of its cantankerous streaks. First off
there was a waiters' strike on the roof-garden restaurant where most of
the tenants took their dinners. It happened between soup and fish. In
fact, the fish never got there at all. Nor the roast, nor the rest of
the meal. And the head waiter and the house manager had a
rough-and-tumble scrap right in plain sight of everybody and some
perfectly awful language was used. Also the striking waiters marched out
in a body and shouted things at the manager as they went. So Auntie had
to put on her things and call a taxi and drive eight blocks before she
could finish her dinner.

Then about 9 o'clock, as she was settling down for a quiet evening in
her rooms, New York pulled another playful little stunt on her. Nothing
unusual. A leaky gas main and a poorly insulated electric light cable
made connection with the well-known results. For half a mile up and down
the avenue that Auntie's apartment faced on the manhole covers were
blown off. They go off with a roar and a bang, you know. One of 'em
sailed neatly up within ten feet of Auntie's back hair, crashed through
the window of the apartment just above her and landed on the floor so
impetuous that about a yard of plaster came rattlin' down on Auntie's
head. Some fell in her lap and some went down the back of her neck.

All of which was more or less disturbin' to an old girl who was tryin'
to read Amy Lowell's poems and had had her nerves jarred only a couple
of hours before. However, she came out of it noble, with the aid of her
smellin' salts and the assurance of the manager that it wouldn't happen
again. Not that same evenin', anyway. He was almost positive it
wouldn't. At least, it seldom did.

But being in on a s