He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and plunged into the confusion of crates and boxes that congested the rooms and hallways on the first floor of the house. The two sisters could hear him attacking his task with tremendous blows of the kitchen hammer. From time to time he called up the stairway:

“Hey, what do you want done with this jardiniere thing?⁠ ⁠… Where does this hanging lamp go, Laura?”

Laura, having unpacked all the cut-glass ornaments, came downstairs, and she and Landry set about hanging the parlour curtains.

Landry fixed the tops of the 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 screwdriver, and a stepladder? Yes, and I’ll have to have some brass nails, and your hired man must let me have that hammer again.”