The House of All Sorts Read Online Free PDF Page B

anyhow.”
    â€œBetter stay near the ’phone. Why not a hot bath?”
    â€œSplendid idea. But—the ’phone?”
    â€œI’ll be here.”
    No sooner was he in the tub than the message came.
    â€œYou are wanted on the ’phone.” I shouted through two doors.
    â€œTake it.” He sounded as if he were drowning.
    I was down again in a moment. “A boy—both doing well.” Dead stillness.
    By and by I went down. He was skimming the cream off the milk jug into the cat’s dish. The hair stuck damp on his forehead, his cheeks were wet.
    â€œThank God I was in the tub! I could not have stood it—I should never have thought of asking how she—
they
—were.” Realization of the plural clicked a switch that lit up his whole being.

A TYRANT AND A WEDDING
    SHE CAME FROM the prairie, a vast woman with a rolling gait, too much fat, too little wind, only one eye.
    She stood at the bottom of the long stair and bribed a child to tell me she was there. Her husband sat on the verandah rail leaning forward on his stick, her great shapeless hand steadying him. This lean, peevish man had no more substance than a suit on a hanger. A clerical collar cut the mean face from the empty clothes.
    The old lady’s free hand rolled towards the man. “This,” she said, “is the Reverend Daniel Pendergast. I am Mrs. Pendergast. We came about the flat.”
    The usual rigmarole—rental—comfortable beds—hot water… They moved in immediately.
    I despised the Reverend Pendergast more every day. His heart was mean as well as sick. He drove the old lady without mercy by night and by day. She did his bidding with patient, adoring gasps. He flung his stick angrily at every living thing, be it wife, beast or bird—everything angered him. Then he screamed for his wife to pick up his stick—retrieve it for him like a dog. She must share his insomnia too by reading to him most of the night; that madethe tears pour out of the seeing and the unseeing eye all the next day. Her cheeks were always wet with eye-drips.
    I was sorry for the old lady. I liked her and did all I could to help her in every way except in petting the parson. She piled all the comforts, all the tidbits, on him. When I took her flowers and fruit from my garden, it was he that always got them, though I said, most pointedly, “For
you
,
Mrs
. Pendergast,” and hissed the “s’s” as loud as I could.
    She would beg me, “Do come in and talk to ‘Parson’; he loves to see a fresh face.”
    Sometimes, to please her, I sat just a few minutes by the sour creature.
    One morning when I came down my stair she moaned through the crack of the door, “Come to me.”
    â€œWhat is the matter?” I said. She looked dreadful.
    â€œI fell into the coal-bin last night. I could not get up. My foot was wedged between the wall and the step.”
    â€œWhy did you not call to me?”
    â€œI was afraid it would disturb the Parson. I got up after a while but the pain of getting up and down in the night to do for my husband was
dreadful
torture.”
    â€œAnd he let you do it?”
    â€œI did not tell him I was hurt. His milk must be heated—he must be read to when he does not sleep.”
    â€œHe is a selfish beast,” I said. She was too deaf, besides hurting too much, to hear me.
    When I had helped to fix her broken knees and back, I stalked into the living-room where the Reverend Pendergast lay on a couch.
    â€œMrs. Pendergast has had a very bad fall. She can scarcely move for pain.”
    â€œClumsy woman! She is always falling down,” he said indifferently.
    I can’t think why I did not hit him. I came out and banged the door after me loudly, hoping his heart would jump right out of his body. I knew he hated slams.
    THERE WAS AN OUTBREAK of caterwaulings. The neighbourhood was much disturbed. The cats were strays—miserable