My wife hadn't thought of the possibilities of Murphy's lap. The instant he mentioned it, she darted back into the house, quickly to reappear with a double armful of odds and ends that she couldn't get into the suit cases and trunks.
"It's mighty kind of you," she said, with the sort of a smile that nailed me fifteen years ago. "If you can just carry these little things in your lap——"
Murphy is a game one.
When he drove away Murphy's lap looked like the market burden of a suburbanite. And because he was so cheerful about it, and so willing to do so much for so little, and because he is such a good citizen, again I say:
"Heaven bless Murphy!"
After Murphy had moved us in our real troubles began. I should have said our real joys, for, believe me, the infant troubles of owning your castle are so refined and glorified by the pride of possession that they appear only as strengthening alloy in the pure gold of content.
It was on Thursday and Friday that Murphy moved us. On Saturday I went to the house, and the lady who will hereafter listen for the tinkle of the door and telephone bells met me, brimming over with cheerfulness and almost as proud of herself as I was of the lord of the manor who strutted like a peacock, as for the first time he showed his feathers in his own front yard.
Never praise your wife too much, or she will dominate you.
But as this is to be a truthful chronicle, be it said that my wife is the most wonderful woman in the world. How on earth she ever got the chairs and tables, the china closet and dishes, the cooking hardware and beds and mattresses and my desk and revolving bookcase, and Heaven knows what, all in place in one day is beyond me.
There were pictures on the walls—old friends in new places, looking down to greet me. A foolish Billiken laughed out loud as I held up my hands in amazement.