And never, in twenty-two
years of respectable tenancy, had the furtive lodger oozed, under
darkness, through the Plush front door by night, or a huddle of
sidewalk trunks and trappings staged the drab domestic tragedy of the
dispossessed.
The Kellers (second-story back) had eaten their satisfied way through
fourteen years of the breakfasts of apple sauce or cereal; choice of ham
and eggs any style or country sausage and buckwheat cakes.
Jeanette Peopping, born in the back parlor, was married out of the
front.
On the night that marked the seventeenth anniversary of the Dangs into
the third-floor alcove room there was frozen pudding with hot fudge
sauce for dessert, and a red-paper bell ringing silently from the
dining-room chandelier.
For the eight years of their placid connubiality Mr. and Mrs. Henry Jett
had occupied the second-story front.
Stability, that was the word. Why, Mrs. Plush had dealt with her corner
butcher for so long that on crowded Saturday mornings it was her custom
to step without challenge into the icy zone of the huge refrigerator,
herself pinching and tearing back the cold-storage-bitten wings of
fowls, weighing them with a fidelity to the ounce, except for a few
extra giblets (Mr.
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