“Well, what of that? It ain’t never been locked.”
“I won’t have that Mrs. Bixby running down on me every minute,” Julie cried hysterically. “She’ll be in and out of the store all the time; I know she will. But I won’t have her running down into my home place!”
“Well,” Aunt Sadie said in her large and placid way, “I wouldn’t take it as hard as all that, but I believe you’re about right. I’m not so struck on the woman, myself. She’s a right airy piece. I hated to let her have the rooms after the way she turned up her nose at ’em. But I did want the money for the rent, and there really ain’t any other place I know of in town for them to go to, and I felt sorry for that little man. He’s a kind of pitiful little feller. It looks like he tries so hard, an’ she just snaps him off every time.”
“I can’t get a key to fit,” Julie said, going on desperately with her attempt to lock the door.
“Here, let’s see how this’ll do,” Aunt Sadie offered, taking a key out of the closet door of the room they were in, and trying it in the lock. “There now,” she said triumphantly as the key slipped into place, “Now you go on out your side, and I’ll lock the door, and put the key back in the closet here. When she comes she’ll find the door fastened an’ never think to try to unlock it.”
Julie withdrew reluctantly. Outside she waited until she heard the key scrape in the lock. Then she tried the door, and being assured that it was really secure, she went down the steps to her own demesne, with a feeling of relief and safety.
VIII
The Bixbys moved into Aunt Sadie’s rooms the next day. The little apartment was already furnished, so there was not a great deal of moving to do: merely the carrying in of a couple of trunks, a phonograph, and a suit-case. The windows and doors were all open, and Julie down in her little shop could hear much of what went on overhead. She heard Elizabeth calling out sharp directions to Mr. Bixby as he staggered up the stairway under one of the trunks. Then he was sent off to buy a broom and some extra cooking-utensils. He came back presently, laden with all sorts of angular bundles; but he had evidently forgotten something, for his wife’s voice was raised in complaint. Julie could not often hear the exact words, and she almost never heard his answers. She gathered that often he did not reply at all, for every now and then Elizabeth would burst out, “Answer me!”
But at last they settled down and had dinner, after which Mr. Bixby went off to the office of the Hart’s Run News; Elizabeth did some ostentatious sweeping, and then the creaking tread of her footsteps subsided.
“She’s taking a rest now,” Julie told herself. “She’ll get up after a little bit, and then she’ll dress herself and come down here.”