CHAPTER THREE
I
Behold Mrs. Kennedy answering an advertisement for a janitress, far over on the lower West Side, in the Chelsea district.
"I have the best of references," she told Mr. Steinberg, the landlord. "I’ve been where I am now for twelve years, and no complaints."
"Den vy do you leaf?"
"I don’t like living ’way up there," she answered calmly. "I’ve got more friends down around here. And my married daughter’s coming to live with me, and she’d rather be down here. She’s real lonely, now her husband’s gone to the war."
This was her ruse to preserve that respectability which no one valued or even observed.
She got the place, because of her decency and her references. There was nothing to be said against her in any quarter. What is more, Mr. Steinberg felt from the look of her that she was a hard worker. Like her other place, it was a "cold water" flat; there was a man to look after the furnace, but everything else was to be done by her, for her rent and an incredibly small stipend. She agreed. Her sole asset was her readiness to undertake hard and unremitting labour. There was not a thing which she could do better than the average woman, so that her boast, her credit, must be that she did more.
"My married daughter’s thinking of taking in sewing," she said. "Maybe you could put a little work in her way."