“When did you say we could move in?” I turned to Mr. Brennan, determined to get away from the subject of Grace Draper as quickly as possible.

“Today, if you want it.”

“No,” returned Dicky, “but we will want it soon.  When do you think we can move?” He turned to me.

* * * * *

I spent three busy days at the Brennan place.  There was much to be done both inside and outside the house.  After the first day, Katie did not return with me, as my mother-in-law needed her in the apartment.  But I engaged another woman with the one I had for the work in the house and put the grinning William in charge of an old man I had secured to clean up the grounds and make the garden.

I soon found that I had a treasure in Mr. Jones, who was a typical old Yankee farmer, a wizened little man with chin whiskers.  He could only give me a day or two occasionally, as he was old and confided to me that he was subject to “the rheumatics.”  But while I was there he ploughed and harrowed and planted the garden, cleared the rubbish away, and made me innumerable flower beds, keeping an iron hand over the irresponsible William, whose grin gradually faded as he was forced to do some real work for his day’s wages.

A riotous and extravagant hour in a seed and bulb store resulted in my getting all the flower favorites I had loved in my childhood.  I also bought the seeds of all vegetables which Dicky and I liked, and a few more, and put them in Mr. Jones’s capable hands.

If there was a variety of vegetables or flower seeds which looked attractive in the seedman’s catalogue, and which remained unbought, it was the fault of the salesman, for I conscientiously tried to select every one.  I planned the location of a few of the beds, and then confided to Mr. Jones the rest of the outdoor work, knowing that he could finish it after my return to the city.

Mr. Birdsall, the agent, was very tractable about the kitchen, sending men the second day to paint it.  So at the end of the third day, when I turned the key in the lock of the front door, I was conscious that the house was as clean as soap and water and hard work could make it, that the grounds were in order, and the growing things I loved on their way to greet me.

I fancy it was high time things were accomplished, for in some way I had caught a severe cold.  At least that was the way I diagnosed my complaint.  My throat seemed swollen, my head ached severely, and each bone and muscle in my body appeared to have its separate pain.  When I reached the apartment I felt so ill that I undressed and went to bed at once.

“You must spray your throat immediately,” my mother-in-law said in a businesslike way, “and I suppose we ought to send for that jackanapes of a doctor.”

Even through my suffering I could not help but smile at my mother-in-law’s reference to Dr. Pettit, who had attended her in her illness.  She had summarily dismissed him because he had forbidden her to see to the unpacking of her trunks when she was barely convalescent, and we had not seen him since.