Even though the house was going to be torn down and the stuff in it, except for what Sloane had offered to the museum near Boston, was going to the Salvation Army, it looked as it always had and what was worse as if it would always stay that way. (As if he couldn’t order it torn down.) He had, however, pulled the most comfortable chair in the small sitting room out into the hall near the telephone. At least he could be comfortable while he kept an ear to the phone and an eye on the front door and the other eye and ear on Mrs. Austen as she went about her business. So far nothing had happened. Nothing would happen. Only one week more not counting tonight. (He would go to bed early and then it would really be only one week more. He looked at his watch. Eighty-twenty; he would go up to bed around ten.) When the telephone rang, Mrs. Austen was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner and he was making the final “arrangements” with Joe Dinton. (Final arrangements meant finished. Finished.) When the phone rang, Joe Dinton stopped talking and his pencil point stabbed into the dollar sign on the “estimate.”
