The House of All Sorts Read Online Free PDF

money’s worth. Perhaps he did change his furniture about, just a little, but only enough to make it home him. Every hen likes to scrape the straw around her nest, making it different from every other hen’s. There was the pompousperson who came holding a roll of bills patronizingly as if he were handing you a tip. There was the stingy one, parting hardly with his cash, fishing the hot tarnished silver and dirty bills from the depths of a trouser pocket and counting them lingeringly, grudgingly, into your palm. There was the rent dodger who always forgot rent date. There was every kind of payer. But most renters seemed to regard rent as an unfairness—was not the earth the Lord’s? Just so, but who pays the taxes?

DIRECT ACTION
    OUR DISTRICT WAS much too genteel to settle disagreements by a black eye or vituperation. Troubles were rushed upstairs to the landlady. I wished my tenants would emulate my gas stove. In proud metallic lettering she proclaimed herself “Direct action” and lived up to it.
    How bothersome it was having Mrs. Lemoyne mince up my stair to inform on Mrs. FitzJohn; having to run down the long stair, round the house and carry the complaint to Mrs. FitzJohn, take the retort back to Mrs. Lemoyne and return the ultimatum—upping and downing until I was tired! Then, often, to find that there was no trouble between the two ladies at all. The whole affair was a fix-up, to convey some veiled complaint against my house or against me, to have the complainer send a sweet message to the complained-of: “Don’t give the matter another thought, my dear. It is really of no consequence at all,” and from my window see the ladies smiling, whispering, nodding in the direction of my flat. I would have liked better an honest pig-sow who projected her great grunt from the depths of her pen right into one’s face.
    My sisters, who lived round the corner from the House of All Sorts, watched my landladying with disapproval, always siding with the tenant and considering my “grunt” similes most unrefined. But they did not have to be landladies.

COLD SWEAT
    HIS HAND TREMBLED —so did his voice.
    â€œYou will leave the door of your flat unlocked tonight? So that I could reach the ’phone?”
    â€œCertainly.”
    He went to the door, stood there, clinging to the knob as if he must hold on to something.
    â€œBeautiful night,” he said and all the while he was turning up his coat collar because of the storming rain outside. He went into the night. I closed the door; the knob was wet with the sweat of his hand.
    Bump, bump, bump, and a curse. I ran out and looked over the rail. He was rubbing his shins.
    â€œThat pesky cat—I trod on her—” he cursed again. He loved that cat. I heard him for half an hour calling among the wet bushes. “Puss, Puss, poor Puss.” Maybe that mother cat knew his mind needed to be kept busy and was hiding.
    I was just turning in when he came again.
    â€œShe’s all right.”
    â€œYou have had word? I am so glad—”
    â€œThe cat, I mean,” he said, glowering at me. “She was not hurt when I trod on her—shan’t sleep tonight—not one wink, but if I should not hear your ’phone—would you call me?—leave your window open so I shall hear the ring?”
    â€œAll right, I’ll call you; I am sure to hear if you don’t.”
    â€œThanks, awfully.”
    The telephone did not ring. In the morning he looked worse.
    He came up and sat by the ’phone, scowling at the instrument as if it were to blame. At last he found courage to ring the hospital. After a terse sentence or two he slammed the receiver down and sat staring.
    â€œThat your porridge burning?”
    â€œYes!” He rushed down the stair, and returned immediately with the black, smoking pot in his hand.
    â€œIf it were not Sunday I’d go to the office—hang! I’ll go