Aglet has no doubt that Jennifer would pitch a fit if she had any idea how many little modifications he's made to the furniture and cabinetry. It's something of a point of pride that she doesn't, actually; a good borrower hides his tools and his trackways.

He's been tracking the time and knows that she's due back soon, so he's already on his way back to the shelf from where he's been working on his latest project: making a nice little hole in the back of one of the lower kitchen cabinets. Odds are there's nothing in there he even wants (and that Jennifer would let him in if he asked nicely), but it's good to keep busy and to set the place up the way he likes it. He crosses the apartment the way he usually does, which is to hurry alongside the baseboard, ducking under or behind any furniture he comes to. Striking out across the middle of the room would be less distance but is nearly unthinkable.

Her knock comes just as he nears the base of the bookshelf, and he hurries up the back of it in order to be well off the floor when they get inside. He's about to climb out onto his own shelf when she announces company, and abruptly changes his mind and continues up to the very top so he can look down on the beans from a vantage point where Jennifer won't expect to find him. All but holding his breath, he lays down on his belly and shimmies through the dust to peer over the edge and find out just what kind of bean she's expecting him to talk to.