Kaufman, who wore bombazine, but unspotted and with
crisp net frills at the throat, and upon whose soft-looking face the years
had written their chirography in invisible ink, would sit suddenly, there
in the narrow gloom of her halls, head against the balustrade. Oftener than
not the Katz boy from the third floor front would come lickety-clapping
down the stairs and past her, jumping the last four steps of each flight.
"Irving, quit your noise in the hall."
"Aw!"
"Ain't you ashamed, a big boy like you, and Mrs. Suss with her neuralgia?"
"Aw!"--the slam of a door clipping off this insolence.
After a while she would resume her climb.
And yet in Mrs. Kaufman's private boarding-house in West Eighty-ninth
Street, one of a breastwork of brownstone fronts, lined up stoop for stoop,
story for story, and ash-can for ash-can, there were few enough greasy
odors except upon the weekly occasion of Monday's boiled dinner; and,
whatever the status of liver and dried peaches, canned corn and round
steak, her menus remained static--so static that in the gas-lighted
basement dining-room and at a remote end of the long, well-surrounded table
Mrs.
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