tering along the sidewalk with nose
uptilted, waving genial greetings to the various groups on the steps,
Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly change to one of fatuous
playfulness.

"What's this I hear about giving the girls the vote, Chris?" Johnny would
innocently inquire, winking at Janet, invariably running his hand through
the wiry red hair that resumed its corkscrew twist as soon as he released
it. And Chris would as invariably reply:--"You have the dandruffs--yes?
You come to my shop, I give you somethings...."

Sometimes the barber, in search of a more aggressive adversary than
Edward, would pay visits, when as likely as not another neighbour with
profound convictions and a craving for proselytes would swoop down on the
defenceless Bumpuses: Joe Shivers, for instance, who lived in one of the
tenements above the cleaning and dyeing establishment kept by the Pappas
Bros., and known as "The Gentleman." In the daytime Mr. Shivers was a
model of acquiescence in a system he would have designated as one of
industrial feudalism, his duty being to examine the rolls of cloth as
they came from the looms of the Arundel Mill, in case of imperfections
handing them over to the women menders: at night, to borrow a vivid
expression from Lise, he was "batty in the belfry" on the subject of
socialism. Unlike the barber, whom he could not abide, for him the
cleavage of the world was between labour and capital instead of man and
woman; his philosophy was stern and naturalistic; the universe--the
origin of which he did not discuss--just an accidental assemblage of
capricious forces over which human intelligence was one day to triumph.
Squatting on the lowest step, his face upturned, by the light of the arc
sputtering above the street he looked like a yellow frog, his eager eyes
directed toward Janet, whom he suspected of intelligence.

"If there was a God, a nice, kind, all-powerful God, would he permit what
happened in one of the loom-rooms last week? A Polak girl gets her hair
caught in the belt pfff!" He had a marvellously realistic gift when it
came to horrors: Janet felt her hair coming out by the roots. Although
she never went to church, she did not like to think that no God existed.
Of this Mr. Shivers was very positive. Edward, too, listened uneasily,
hemmed and hawed, making ineffectual attempts to combat Mr. Shivers's
socialism with a deeply-rooted native individualism that Shivers declared
as defunct as Christianit