And sure enough, the blamed truck turns into our driveway. By the time I arrives the man has just unloaded two wardrobe trunks and a hat box. And in the livin' room I finds Auntie.
"Eh?" says I, starin'. "Why, I—I thought you was——"
"How cordial!" says Auntie.
"Yes," says I, catchin' my breath quick. "Isn't it perfectly bully that you could come? We was afraid you'd be havin' such a good time in town that we couldn't——"
"And so I was, until last night," says Auntie. "Verona, will tell you all about it, I've no doubt."
Oh yes, Vee does. She unloads it durin' a little stroll we took out towards the garden. New York hadn't been behavin' well towards Auntie. Not at all well. Just got on one of its cantankerous streaks. First off there was a waiters' strike on the roof-garden restaurant where most of the tenants took their dinners. It happened between soup and fish. In fact, the fish never got there at all. Nor the roast, nor the rest of the meal. And the head waiter and the house manager had a rough-and-tumble scrap right in plain sight of everybody and some perfectly awful language was used. Also the striking waiters marched out in a body and shouted things at the manager as they went. So Auntie had to put on her things and call a taxi and drive eight blocks before she could finish her dinner.
Then about 9 o'clock, as she was settling down for a quiet evening in her rooms, New York pulled another playful little stunt on her. Nothing unusual. A leaky gas main and a poorly insulated electric light cable made connection with the well-known results. For half a mile up and down the avenue that Auntie's apartment faced on the manhole covers were blown off. They go off with a roar and a bang, you know. One of 'em sailed neatly up within ten feet of Auntie's back hair, crashed through the window of the apartment just above her and landed on the floor so impetuous that about a yard of plaster came rattlin' down on Auntie's head. Some fell in her lap and some went down the back of her neck.
All of which was more or less disturbin' to an old girl who was tryin' to read Amy Lowell's poems and had had her nerves jarred only a couple of hours before. However, she came out of it noble, with the aid of her smellin' salts and the assurance of the manager that it wouldn't happen again. Not that same evenin', anyway. He was almost positive it wouldn't. At least, it seldom did.
But being in on a strike, and a free-for-all fight, and a conduit explosion hadn't prepared Auntie to hit the feathers early. So at 1:30 A. M. she was still wide awake and wanderin' around in her nightie with the shades up and the lights out. That's how she happened to be stretchin' her neck out of the window when this offensive broke loose on the roof of the buildin' across the way.
Auntie was just wondering why those two men were skylarking around on the roof so late at night when two more popped out of skylights and began to bang away at them with revolvers. Then the first two started to shoot back, and the first thing Auntie knew there was a crash right over her head where a stray bullet had wandered through the upper pane. Upon which Auntie screamed and fainted. Of course, she had read about loft robbers, but she hadn't seen 'em in action. And she didn't want to see 'em at such close range any more. Not her. She'd had enough, thank you. So when she came to from her faintin' spell she begun packin' her trunks. After breakfast she'd called Vee on the 'phone, sketched out some of her troubles, and been invited to come straight to Harbor Hills.