And Laura, remembering her "Shakespeare," was ever ready with the
words:

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Just after breakfast, in fact, Landry did appear.

"Now," he began, with a long breath, addressing Laura, who was
unwrapping the pieces of cut glass and bureau ornaments as Page
passed them to her from the depths of a crate. "Now, I've done a lot
already. That's what made me late. I've ordered your newspaper sent
here, and I've telephoned the hotel to forward any mail that comes
for you to this address, and I sent word to the gas company to have
your gas turned on--"

"Oh, that's good," said Laura.

"Yes, I thought of that; the man will be up right away to fix it,
and I've ordered a cake of ice left here every day, and told the
telephone company that you wanted a telephone put in. Oh, yes, and
the bottled-milk man--I stopped in at a dairy on the way up. Now,
what do we do first?"

He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and plunged into
the confusion of crates and boxes that congested the rooms and
hallways on the first floor of the house. The two sisters could hear
him attacking his task with tremendous blows of the kitchen hammer.
From time to time he called up the stairway:

"Hey, what do you want done with this jardiniere thing? ... Where