There are more ways than one of calling a man a liar. And some are safer than others. "Did you really have the smoke test put through the plumbing as you said you did?" I asked. Mr. Close eagerly produced the bill. Plumber's bills are conclusive evidence. "Did you have the range cleaned and the water-back examined?" demanded Aubrey. Mr. Close swore that he did. Aubrey led him captive around the house and showed him the confusion thereof, Mary grimly following. I think Close preferred Aubrey to me, and me or anybody to Mary, for Mary's very spectacles were bristling with anger. She could see herself, in her best dress, having to clean up that mess so that the furniture could be moved in. Then Aubrey's men began to arrive. The man with the chandeliers. The carpenters to lay the floors. The man from the water office. My negro cleaning woman and the grocer's boy. Fortunately, the cleaning woman had brought a broom, a mop, and a bucket. As there were no fires, Aubrey and Mr. Close made one in the furnace; Mary and the grocer's boy--or rather the grocer's boy under Mary's direction--built one in the range, while I set the woman to sweeping one floor for the carpenters to begin on. Suddenly I heard hurried feet running up the cellar stairs. The water man had turned the water on from the street, and it was gaily pouring into the cellar. Mr. Close is a fat man, but he ran like a jack-rabbit to that water main, and shut it off. Then without daring to face--Mary, he started to town for a plumber. He had not been gone half an hour when the water-back blew up. Fortunately, no one was in the kitchen at the time, but the cleaning woman turned from black to a dirty gray with fright, and without further ado went home. I can't say that I blamed her. Aubrey was busy putting out the furnace fire and bailing out the cellar, so he did not know of that defection. However, a culmination of such calamities, instead of smiting me to the earth, aroused every drop of fighting blood in my whole body. I went out on the porch to think it over, and as I thought I began to laugh. I laughed until Aubrey heard me and thought I was crying. He came hurrying out, with a face full of anxiety, saying, before he saw me: "Never mind, dear! I know this is hard on you, but--" "Well, I'll be--!" Both of those remarks were Aubrey's. He was much relieved, however, to discover that I was not cast down by all these disasters. In fact, our moving partook more of the delights of camping out than orthodox housekeeping, and I soon discovered expedients.