“Stitchy Branchett told me,” contributed Margaret Amelia, “once he set on the top step of the step ladder on one of their dray loads.”
“I don’t believe it,” I announced flatly. “It’d tip and pitch him off.”
“He said he did,” Margaret Amelia held. “Betty heard him. Didn’t he, Betty? Who I don’t believe is Joe Richmond. He says he went to sleep on a mattress on the dray when they moved. He couldn’t of.”
“Course he couldn’t of,” we all affirmed.
“Delia says they’ve moved six times that she can remember of and she’s rode on every load,” I repeated.
We all looked enviously across at Delia’s house. Then, moved by a common impulse, we scrambled back to make the most of our own advantages, such as they were.
At last the ground floor of the furniture store was all arranged, and the two show windows set with the choicest pieces to face the street. And when we were ready to open the place to the general public, we sat on the edge of the well curb and surveyed our results.
“Now let’s start,” said Margaret Amelia.
At that instant—the precision with which these things happen is almost conscious—Mary Gilbraith briefly put her head out the kitchen window.
“It’s just edgin’ on ’leven,” she announced. “You children keep your feet off them mattresses.”