Free It had to be You by Jill Churchill Page A

person who had had such a brilliant time- and effort-saving idea.
    He called the Harbinger house and was told by Mrs. Harbinger that Harry was just finishing up repairing a lock and asked if he could call back.
    Robert asked her to tell Harry to call him back at the nursing home.
    “You’re not hurt or sick, are you?“ Mrs. Harbinger said with alarm.
    “No, I’m not. My sister and I are just filling in for a sick nurse.”
    Harry called back in ten minutes. “Mom was worried about you. What do you need?”
    Robert explained what a dumbwaiter was and approximately how he thought it worked, not that he’d ever actually used one of them.
    “Ropes and pulleys,“ Harry said. “Easy if there’s room to do it at each floor at the same place above and below.“
    “Have you ever built one?“
    “No. But my folks took us to New York once and there was a big store that had them. I wanted to see how they worked and Dad made somebody show me.“
    “Good enough. Miss Twibell is interested in having you see if it’s possible and how much it would cost.“
    “Give me directions to this place, and I’ll bring my brother along to write down dimensions,“ Harry said.
    “You mean right now?“
    “Nobody much wants us working at their houses on Fridays. They’re afraid we’ll leave a mess they’ll be tripping over all weekend. We finished one job yesterday and don’t have anything else lined up yet. We’ll be there in a tick.”
    Robert waited anxiously, wondering what was taking them so long. When he passed a window, he saw that they were already outside and measuring the dimensions of the entire house. This was an obvious way to start, he realized, feeling quite silly not to have realized it until he saw them.
    A little while later, they knocked at the door and Robert rushed to let them in. Harry had a big paper with grid lines. The outside dimensions were all written down at the edges.
    “Where do you want to start?“ Robert asked. “On the second floor or the basement?“
    “The ground floor,“ Harry said. “We don’t want to run it down through the middle of a dining room or a parlor.”
    As they started taking measurements, Robert went back upstairs to ask Miss Twibell’s permission to help them. But he had to wait for a while. Miss Twibell was busy telling Mattie she was welcome to come out and sit in the living room, but she absolutely wasn’t allowed to make her bed first. “You aren’t working here, my dear child. You are a patient who needs all the rest you can get. No more of this, understand?”
    Mattie wasn’t offended by this edict. She smiled and said, “I’ve made so many beds here that I just did so without even thinking about it.”
    Miss Twibell led Mattie to the sofa, then brought her a pillow and a nice wool throw.
    As Miss Twibell sat down in one of the side chairs, Robert asked if he could help Harry and Jim do the measurements.
    “They’re already here?“ she said with surprise.
    Three hours later, Robert and the Harbinger boys came up to the second floor. Robert looked smug. Harry asked Miss Twibell if he could look in the storeroom to take his last measurements.
    “Of course. I’d hate to lose the storeroom though. It’s so handy.”
    The three young men didn’t say anything as they went into the storeroom. They’d closed the door and Miss Twibell, Lily, and Betty crept closer to see if they could hear through it.
    Mattie had already been fed lunch and put back into bed for a nap. The door to the Smith and Jones room opened and the ladies came out. “What’s that noise behind our wall?“ Miss Smith asked eagerly. “Is something interesting going on?“
    “It might be interesting. We’re waiting to hear,“ Lily told her. “Why don’t you ladies sit down and try to guess what’s happening?”
    Robert and the Harbinger boys came out, smiling and slapping each other on the back.
    “It can be done, Miss Twibell,“ Harry Harbinger said. “If you could clear that table