The House of All Sorts Read Online Free PDF Page A

“You hurried our moving,” and shrugged.
    The soup required a plumber.
    THIS FIRST TENANT nearly discouraged me with landladying. I consulted an experienced person. She said, “In time you will learn to make yourself hard, hard!”

DEW AND ALARM CLOCKS
    POETICAL EXTRAVAGANCE over “pearly dew and daybreak” does not ring true when that most infernal of inventions, the alarm clock, wrenches you from sleep, rips a startled heart from your middle and tosses it on to an angry tongue, to make ugly splutterings not complimentary to the new morning; down upon you spills cold shiveriness—a new day’s responsibilities have come.
    To part from pillow and blanket is like bidding goodbye to all your relatives suddenly smitten with plague.
    The attic window gaped into empty black. No moon, no sun, no street lamps. Trees, houses, telephone poles muddled together and out in that muddle of blank perhaps one or two half-hearted kitchen lights morosely blinking. Sun had not begun.
    The long outside stair, from flat to basement, never creaked so loudly as just before dawn. No matter how I tiptoed, every tread snapped, “Ik!”
    Punk, the house dog, walked beside me step by step, too sleepy to bounce.
    Flashlights had not been invented. My arms threshed the black of the basement passage for the light bulb. Cold and grim sat that malevolent brute the furnace, greedy, bottomless—itsgrate bars clenched over clinkers which no shaker could dislodge. I was obliged to thrust head and shoulders through the furnace door. I loathed its black, the smell of soot. I was sure one day I should stick. I pictured the humiliation of being hauled out by the shoes. Could I ever again be a firm dignified landlady after being pulled like that from a furnace mouth?
    I could hear tenants still sleeping—the house must be warm for them to wake to…
    â€œWOO, WOO!” A tiny black hand drew the monkey’s box curtain back. “Woo, Woo!” A little black face enveloped in yawn peeped out. One leg stretched, then the other. “Woo.” She crept from her box to feel if her special pipe was warm, patted approvingly, flattened her tummy to the heat. The cat came, shaking sleep out of her fur. Crackle, crackle!—the fire was burning. Basement windows were now squares of blue-grey dawn.
    Carrying a bucket of ashes in each hand I went into the garden, feeling like an anchor dropped overboard. Everything was so coldly wet, I so heavy. Dawn was warming the eastern sky just a little. The Bobbies were champing for liberty. They had heard my step. The warmth of their loving did for the garden what the furnace was doing for the house.
    Circled by a whirl of dogs I began to live the day.
    We raced for Beacon Hill, pausing when we reached its top. From here I could see my house chimney—mine. There
is
possessive joy, and anyway the alarm clock would not rouse me from sleep for another twenty-three hours—might as well be happy!
    Up came the sun, and drank the dew.

MONEY
    FROM THE MOMENT key and rent exchanged hands a subtle change took place in the attitude of renter towards owner.
    The tenant was obviously anxious to get you out, once the flat was hers. She might have known, silly thing, that you wanted to be out—before she began to re-arrange things.
    Bump, bump, bump! It would never do to let a landlady think her taste and arrangement were yours. Particularly women with husbands made it their business to have the man exchange every piece of furniture with every other. When they left you had to get some one to move them all back into place. When once they had paid and called it “
my
flat” they were always asking for this or that additional furniture or privilege.
    THERE WAS THE tenant who came singing up my long stair and handed in the rent with a pleasant smile. It was folded in a clean envelope so that the raw money was not handled between you. You felt him satisfied with his