ke's four-room house--it exactly fitted
his family. The floor plan was simple and economically efficient.
Between the monolithic door slab--relic of a time when Bob's house had
been frankly "in the country"--and the public street lay a walk formed
of a single plank supported on chance-set bricks. From the door slab one
stepped through the front doorway directly into the parlor. Beyond the
parlor lay the kitchen, from which one could pass out through a narrow
door to a patch of weed-grown back yard. A ladderlike stair led up from
one side of the kitchen, opposite to the single window and the small
coal range. At the top of the stair was a slit of unlighted hallway with
a door near either end of it. The door toward Birch Street gave upon the
bedroom occupied by Bob and Pearl; the rearward door led to Susan's
sternly ascetic cubiculum. No one of these four rooms could be described
as spacious, but the parlor and Bob's bedroom may have been twelve by
fifteen or thereabouts. Susan's quarters were a scant ten by ten.

The solider and more useful pieces of furniture in the house belonged to
the regime of Susan's mother--the great black-walnut bed which almost
filled the front bedroom; Susan's single iron cot frame; the parlor
table with its marble top; the melodeon; the kitchen range; and the deal
table in the kitchen, upon which, impartially, food was prepared and
meals were served. To these respectable properties Pearl had added from
time to time certain other objects of interest or art.

Thus, in the parlor, there was a cane rocking-chair, gilded; and on the
wall above the melodeon hung a banjo suspended from a nail by a broad
sash of soiled blue ribbon. On the drumhead of the banjo someone had
painted a bunch of nondescript flowers, and Pearl always claimed these
as her own handiwork, wrought in happier days. This was her one eagerly
contested point of pride; for Bob, when in liquor, invariably denied the
possibility of her ever having painted "that there bouquet." This flat
denial was always the starting point for those more violent Sunday-night
quarrels, which had done so much to reduce the furniture of the house to
its stouter, more imperishable elements.

During the brief interval between the death of Susan's mother and the
arrival of Pearl, Bob had placed his domestic affairs in the hands of an
old negro-woman, who came in during the day to clean up, keep an eye on
Susan and prepare Bob's dinner. Most of the hours du