Mrs. Holabird's thinking was something like it.
"Five hundred dollars to worry about, for what is set down upon a few square yards of 'out of doors.' And inside of that, a great contriving and going without, to put something warm underfoot over the sixteen square feet that we live on most!"
She had almost a mind to pull up the blinds again; it was such a very little matter, the bit of new carpet, after all.
"How do I know what they were thinking?" Never mind. People do know, or else how do they ever tell stories? We know lots of things that we don't tell all the time. We don't stop to think whether we know them or not; but they are underneath the things we feel, and the things we do.
Grandfather came in, and said over the same old stereotypes. He had a way of saying them, so that we knew just what was coming, sentence after sentence. It was a kind of family psalter. What it all meant was, "I've looked in to see you, and how you are getting along. I do think of you once in a while." And our worn-out responses were, "It's very good of you, and we're much obliged to you, as far as it goes."
It was only just as he got up to leave that he said the real thing. When there was one, he always kept it to the last.
"Your lease is up here in May, isn't it, Mrs. Stephen?"
"Yes, sir."