t used to it in
time. Not used to it, exactly, but--well----

The bedroom off the kitchen wasn't as menial as it sounds. It was really
rather cosy. The five-room flat held living room, front bedroom, dining
room, kitchen, and maid's room. The room off the kitchen was intended as
a maid's room but Nettie had no maid. George's business had suffered
with the rest. George and Nettie had said, "I wish there was a front
room for you, Father. You could have ours and we'd move back here, only
this room's too small for twin beds and the dressing table and the
chiffonier." They had meant it--or meant to mean it.

"This is fine," old man Minick had said. "This is good enough for
anybody." There was a narrow white enamel bed and a tiny dresser and a
table. Nettie had made gay cretonne covers and spreads and put a little
reading lamp on the table and arranged his things. Ma Minick's picture
on the dresser with her mouth sort of pursed to make it look small. It
wasn't a recent picture. Nettie and George had had it framed for him as
a surprise. They had often urged her to have a picture taken, but she
had dreaded it. Old man Minick didn't think much of that photograph,
though he never said so. He needed no photograph of Ma Minick. He had a
dozen of them; a gallery of them; thousands of them. Lying on his one
pillow he could take them out and look at them one by one as they passed
in review, smiling, serious, chiding, praising, there in the dark. He
needed no picture on his dresser.

A handsome girl, Nettie, and a good girl. He thought of her as a girl,
though she was well past thirty. George and Nettie had married late.
This was only the third year of their marriage. Alma, the daughter, had
married young, but George had stayed on, unwed, in the old house on
Ellis until he was thirty-six and all Ma Minick's friends' daughters had
had a try at him in vain. The old people had urged him to marry, but it
had been wonderful to have him around the house, just the same. Somebody
young around the house. Not that George had stayed around very much. But
when he was there you knew he was there. He whistled while dressing. He
sang in the bath. He roared down the stairway, "Ma, where's my clean
shirts?" The telephone rang for him. Ma Minick prepared special dishes
for him. The servant girl said, "Oh, now, Mr. George, look what you've
done! Gone and spilled the grease all over my clean kitchen floor!" and
wiped it up adoringly while George laughed