Even with my ear against the panel, I could not catch a
word.
The men came just then to move the piano, and by the time we had taken
it and the furniture up-stairs, the water was over the kitchen floor,
and creeping forward into the hall. I had never seen the river come up
so fast. By noon the yard was full of floating ice, and at three that
afternoon the police skiff was on the front street, and I was wading
around in rubber boots, taking the pictures off the walls.
I was too busy to see who the Ladleys' visitor was, and he had gone
when I remembered him again. The Ladleys took the second-story front,
which was empty, and Mr. Reynolds, who was in the silk department in a
store across the river, had the room just behind.
I put up a coal stove in a back room next the bathroom, and managed to
cook the dinner there. I was washing up the dishes when Mr. Reynolds
came in. As it was Sunday, he was in his slippers and had the colored
supplement of a morning paper in his hand.
"What's the matter with the Ladleys?" he asked.
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