Then the three put on their outer garments and turned to leave their flat.
Palma paused and looked back half regretfully.
“Good-by, pretty little home,” she said. “We have been very happy in you, but you must not mind our going away. We shall have to go away from our bodies some of these days! But I hope you will have very pleasant tenants always. Good-by.”
Stuart did not laugh at her, but Mrs. Pole did, and said as they went to the elevator:
“If I didn’t know you as well as I do, child, I should really sometimes think you were crazy!”
“Oh, Poley! don’t you know there is a soul in places and in things, as well as there is in all other living creatures?” she answered.
Mrs. Pole did not reply, but thought within herself: “I do suppose as there be some of the sensiblest people crazy in spots.”
They went down in the elevator; and what a misfit of words there is in that sentence!
They found the janitor waiting in the office to see them off. Mr. Stuart gave him the key of the vacated apartments, and they all shook hands with him and left, with the request that he would see to the delivery of their trunks to the expressman.
Then they walked down the street to the corner of the avenue where the cars passed. Mr. Stuart hailed the first down one, and they boarded it. They rode about the length of twenty blocks, got off and walked across town to Broadway, and entered the office of the hotel that Stuart had chosen for their sojourning place that night.