There was a letter for him on the ten o'clock morning mail. He didn't receive many letters-one a month from Joe Tubbs relating diverting scandal about perfectly respectable neighbors, or an occasional note from Cousin George Henry of Stamford. Lulu was acutely curious regarding it; she almost smelled it, with that quivering sharp-pointed nose of hers that could tell for hours afterward whether Father had been smoking "those nasty, undignified little cigarettes-why don't you smoke the handsome brier pipe that Harris gave you?" She brightly commented that the letter was from Boston. But Father didn't follow her lead. He defensively tucked the letter in his inside coat pocket and trotted up-stairs to read it to Mother.
It was from the Boston agency in whose hands he had left the disposal of the tea-room lease and of their furniture. The agency had, they wrote, managed to break the lease, and they had disposed of the tables and chairs and some of the china. They inclosed a check for twenty-eight dollars.
With the six dollars and eighty-three cents left from their capital the Applebys were the possessors of almost thirty-five dollars!
"Gee! if we only had two or three times that amount we could run away and start again in New York, and not let Lulu make us over into a darned old elderly couple!" Father exulted.
"Yes," sighed Mother. "You know and I know what a fine, sweet, womanly woman Lulu has become, but I do wish she hadn't gone and set her heart on my wearing that lace cap. My lands! makes me feel so old I just don't know myself."
"And me with a granddaddy outfit! Why, I never will dast to go out on the streets again," complained Father. "I never did hear of such a thing before; they making us old, and we begging for a chance to be young, and sitting here and sitting here, and-"
He looked about their room, from the broad window with its resolutely stiff starched net curtains to the very new bureau and the brass bed that looked as though no one had ever dared to sleep in it. He kicked at one of the dollar-ninety-eight-cent rugs and glared at the expanse of smirkingly clean plaster, decorated with an English sporting print composed by an artist who was neither English nor sporting.
"Say," continued Father, "I don't like this room. It's too-clean. I don't dast to wear slippers in it."
"Why, Father, it's a nice room!" marveled Mother. Then, with an outburst of frankness: "Neither do I! It feels like I never could loosen my stays and read the funnies in the last night's paper. Oh, you needn't to look at me so! Many's the time I did that when you were away at the store and I didn't have to sit up and look respectable."
They laughed, both of them, with tender tears. He came to sit on the arm of her rocker and pat her hand.
He said, quietly, very quietly indeed: "Mother, we're getting to be real adventurous. Nothing very old about us, I guess! We're going to sneak right smack out of this house, this very day, and run away to New York, and I'll get a job and we'll stick right there in little old New York for the rest of our lives, so help me Bob!"
"Yes," she said, "yes. I'd like to. But what-uh-what lie could we tell Lulu?"
"Why, Mother, how you talk! Do you know what St. Peter would say to you if he heard you talk about lying? He'd up and jam his halo down over his ears and he'd say, 'You can't come in here, Sarah Jane Appleby. You're a liar. And you know what you can do, don't you? You can go-'"
"Now you see here, Seth Appleby, I just won't have you cursing and swearing and being sacrilegious. I sh'd think you'd be ashamed, man of your age that ought to know better, acting up like a young smarty and cursing and swearing and-"
"And cursing and swearing. Don't forget to put that in, Mother."
He was delighted. It was the first time since September that Mother had scolded him. She was coming back to life again. He tickled her under the chin till she slapped viciously at his finger, then he crowed like a rooster till a shame-faced smile chased away her lively old-dame wrath and, shaking her head with a pretense of disgust, she said, comfortably, "I declare I never did see such a man, not in all my born days." She let him take her hand again, and their expression, half smiles, half musing, was like the sunshine of a calm late afternoon. They were happy. For they knew that, as soon as they should have debated and worried and planned and fussed in a manner appropriate to the great event, they would run away from the overheated respectability of "Lulu's pretty little home."
With enough agony of literary effort to have composed a war article and a column of Household Hints, they sinfully devised a letter for Lulu in which they stated that "a dear old friend, you would not remember him as we have met him since you were married, writes us from Boston that he is sick, and we are going to him, we are stealing out this way because we don't want you to trouble about it, with party coming on to-morrow even'g, know you are so kind you would take all sort of trouble if knew we were going, so just slip away &hope party is great success, Your loving Father &Mother. P.S., May not be back for some time as friend may need us."
In the wreck of their fortunes the Applebys had lost their own furniture, down to the last beloved picture. They had only a suit-case and a steamer-trunk, the highly modern steamer-trunk which Father had once bought for a vacation trip to West Skipsit and the Tubbses. But it required manoeuvering to get even this light baggage to the station.
Mother went nosing about till she discovered that Lulu was going calling that afternoon. Father hired an expressman, who was to be ready to come the instant he telephoned.
Lulu went out at three, and Father stole down-stairs to telephone. But the maid had taken a fancy to dusting the living-room, where the telephone lived. In all her domestic history the maid had never done that before-attest many sarcastic remarks of Lulu.
They had planned to catch the four-o'clock train for New York. Half-past three now. The maid was polishing the silver in the dining-room, which was separated from the living-room only by an open arch. Father dared not telephone, lest she instantly send for Lulu.
Mother tiptoed down and the runaways plotted in whispers. Upon which conspiracy Lulu brightly entered through the front door.
For a second Father had a wild, courageous desire to do the natural thing, to tell Lulu that they were going. But he quailed as Lulu demanded: "Have you tried on the coat and frilled shirt for to-morrow evening yet, papa? You know there may have to be some alterations in them. I'm sure mama won't mind making them, will you, mama! Oh, you two will be so cute and dear, I know everybody will love you, and it will give such a homey, old-fashioned touch that-"
"No, I haven't tried it on yet, and I ain't sure I'm a-going-" Father gallantly attempted.
Lulu glared at him and said, in a voice of honey and aloes, "I'm sure, papa dear, I don't ask very much of you, and when I do ask just this one little thing that I'm sure anybody else would be glad to help me with and me doing my very best to make you happy-"
No! No, no! Father didn't tell her they were going to New York. He was glad enough to escape up-stairs without having the monkey coat tried on him by force.
Their suit case and steamer-trunk stood betrayingly in the middle of the room. With panting anxiety, heaving and puffing, the two domestic anarchists lifted the steamer-trunk, slipped it under the bed and kicked the suit-case into the closet, and sat down to wait for the next train to New York, which left at eleven P. M.
At dinner-such a jolly family dinner, with Mr. Hartwig carving and emitting little jokes, with Harry whining about his homework and Lulu telling the maid what an asphyxiated fool she was to have roasted the lamb too long-Father was highly elaborate in his descriptions of how he had tried on the tail-coat and found it to be a superb fit. As the coat was the personal theatricals-equipment of Mr. Harris Hartwig, who was shaped like the dome of the county court-house, Lulu looked suspicious, but Harry was discovered making bread pills, and she was so engaged in telling him what she thought-Lord, what a thinker the little woman was!-that she forgot to follow the subject.