Without even waiting for an answer from her husband regarding his
opinion or wishes in the matter, Edna hastened her preparations for
quitting her home on Esplanade Street and moving into the little house
around the block. A feverish anxiety attended her every action in that
direction. There was no moment of deliberation, no interval of repose
between the thought and its fulfillment. Early upon the morning
following those hours passed in Arobin's society, Edna set about
securing her new abode and hurrying her arrangements for occupying it.
Within the precincts of her home she felt like one who has entered and
lingered within the portals of some forbidden temple in which a thousand
muffled voices bade her begone.
Whatever was her own in the house, everything which she had acquired
aside from her husband's bounty, she caused to be transported to the
other house, supplying simple and meager deficiencies from her own
resources.
Arobin found her with rolled sleeves, working in company with the
house-maid when he looked in during the afternoon. She was splendid and
robust, and had never appeared handsomer than in the old blue gown, with
a red silk handkerchief knotted at random around her head to protect her
hair from the dust. She was mounted upon a high stepladder, unhooking a
picture from the wall when he entered. He had found the front door open,
and had followed his ring by walking in unceremoniously.
"Come down!" he said. "Do you want to kill yourself?" She greeted him
with affected carelessness, and appeared absorbed in her occupation.
If he had expected to find her languishing, reproachful, or indulging in
sentimental tears, he must have been greatly surprised.
He was no doubt prepared for any emergency, ready for any one of the
foregoing attitudes, just as he bent himself easily and naturally to the
situation which confronted him.
"Please come down," he insisted, holding the ladder and looking up at
her.
"No," she answered; "Ellen is afraid to mount the ladder. Joe is working
over at the 'pigeon house'--that's the name Ellen gives it, because it's
so small and looks like a pigeon house--and someone has to do this."
Arobin pulled off his coat, and expressed himself ready and willing to
tempt fate in her place. Ellen brought him one of her dust-caps,
and went into contortions of mirth, which she found it impossible to
control, when she saw him put it on before the mirror as grotesquely as
he could. Edna herself could not refrain from smiling when she fastened
it at his request. So it was he who in turn mounted the ladder,
unhooking pictures and curtains, and dislodging ornaments as Edna
directed. When he had finished he took off his dust-cap and went out to
wash his hands.