And then their trunks, hers large and his small, made their thumping
entrance. The porter crossed to the window and raised the shade, crossed
to her trunk and undid its straps, dried his moistened brow--and waited.
Marjorie thanked him and smiled. He smiled and waited, drying his brow
industriously the while. No village black-smith ever had so damp a brow
as he. She sympathized with him in the matter of the heat; he
agreed--and waited. He undid the straps of John's trunk; he moved her
trunk into greater proximity to the window and the light; he carried
John's trunk into the sitting-room; he performed innumerable feats of
prowess before her. But she only smiled and commended in an unfinancial
way. Finally he laid violent hands upon his truck and retreated into the
hall, swearing, as became his age, more luridly than the bellboys.

Once more Marjorie looked out into the street for a while and began to
plan the exact form of greeting with which she should meet John. It
already seemed an eternity since she had parted with him. She drew the
pretty evening dress which she had chosen for this and most important
evening from its tissue-paper nest in the upper tray of her trunk. Its
daintiness comforted and cheered her, as a friend's face might have
done, and under its impetus she found calm enough to rearrange her hair,
and, with many a shy recoil and shy caress, to lay out John's evening
things for him, as she had often laid out her father's. How surprised,
she smiled, he would be. How delighted, when he came, to find everything
so comfy and domestic. Surely it was time for him to come. Presently it
was late, and yet he did not come. She evolved another form of greeting:
he did not deserve comfort and domesticity when he did not set more
store on them than on a stupid interview in a stuffy office. He should
see that an appointment with old Nicholson could not be allowed to
interfere with their home life; that, simply because they were married
now, he could not neglect her with impunity.