VII
Allthat Sunday Julie was haunted by the thought of Mr. and Mrs. Bixby’s taking Aunt Sadie’s furnished rooms upstairs. They would all be at very close quarters if they did. Julie kept the store and her three neat little rooms at the back. The other half of the house she rented to Aunt Sadie, who in turn rented out the upstairs floor as a small furnished apartment. Two doors, one upstairs and one down, connected the establishments. The one downstairs opened from Julie’s small hall straight into Aunt Sadie’s sitting-room. The other was at the top of Julie’s flight of stairs and gave on the rooms above. Neither of these doors had ever been locked. Julie and Aunt Sadie were in the habit of running unceremoniously in and out of one another’s quarters by way of the downstairs door, and even the upstairs one Julie had always left unfastened, in case the tenants above desired to come down through her hall and so out to the side street.
Julie was seized that afternoon with a panic over that door.
She was in her sitting-room, seated by the window with her church paper in her lap. The wind blew fitfully in, bringing her the scent of roses from her little plot. She wanted to go out and work around the bushes, but she did not think that was right on Sunday; so after drifting discreetly about the garden, inspecting each plant and little clump of blossoms, she had retired indoors, and settled herself with theSunday Record, which she subscribed to dutifully, and which she usually held in her lap on Sabbath afternoons, but which she rarely read.
She was half asleep over it now, when suddenly the thought of that unlocked door at the head of her stairs leaped in her mind, startling her broad awake.
“Oh, my soul! That door’s unlocked,” she thought. She felt all at once exposed, as though some one—Elizabeth Bixby, for instance—might run unexpectedly in on her when she was undressed.
“I got to lock it,” she breathed. “I got to lock it ’fore that woman moves in. She’ll be runnin’ down on me every minute if I don’t.”
She ran up the stairs and slammed the doorshut; but when her hand felt for the key, there was none in the lock. She jerked the door open and looked on the other side; it was not there either. “My soul! The key’s lost,” she cried in despair. “I got to find a key. Igotto lock that door ’fore she gets here.” She hurried downstairs, and found a box of odd keys; returning with them she began trying one after another, haste and anxiety growing upon her, and her hand so unsteady that the keys made a small chattering against the lock. At any moment she felt the stillness of the rooms might dissolve and Elizabeth Bixby’s crushing personality be upon her. Indeed, now she heard some one coming up the outside stairway. Breathlessly she peeped forth through the vista of rooms, and waited. But it was only Aunt Sadie’s familiar gray head that came into view. She pushed upon the door, and caught sight of Julie.
“My lands! Is that you, Julie? Well, I thought I heard somebody up here,” she cried.
“Has that woman taken the rooms?” Julie demanded.
“Yes, they plan to move in, in the mornin’.Nowwhat’s scared you, Julie?”
“I—I can’t find a key to this door,” Julie said weakly.
“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’thaveher 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.