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.