Christmas morning is not a very popular one for arriving in a city and Josie might have had the pick of automobiles meeting the early train, but the hack driver had got her first and she was determined to stay with him and see the adventure through. Besides, she liked the looks of the man.
The streets were flowing with slush, a mixture of mud and snow that had melted the day before and was freezing again on that Christmas morning. The ancient hackman cracked his whip over the backs of his bony team and the shabby vehicle that was bearing Josie to Miss Lucy Leech’s select boarding house creaked and groaned as though the young girl’s weight was too much for it. Josie bounced helplessly up and down on the back seat.
“Well, I should be thankful it isn’t an ox cart,” she thought. “Time was when a hack was considered the height of luxury. At any rate I can get some idea of the city, which is next to impossible when one is whizzed in an automobile. This sea-going hack is a singularly appropriate vessel in which to sail this turgid stream that no doubt the Louisvillians call a street. Somehow I feel as though we ought to blow a fog horn.”
The winter sun was up and trying to shine, but looked like a huge orange, as seen through the veil of fog and smoke. Tall buildings made the narrow streets of the down-town district seem like canyons. The city seemed deserted, except for an occasional taxi and the inevitable early bird of a newsboy crying his papers. Nothing is more forlorn than a usually busy section of a city on a foggy Christmas morning. Josie was relieved when her craft tacked down a side street that showed signs of life, although the life of the shabby genteel.
There was no doubt about the neighborhood having at one time been fashionable. The houses were built on a lavish scale, with high ceilings and broad, hospitable steps and yards, front, back and side. On that street boarding houses were the rule and private homes the exception. Trade had begun to encroach on the one time residential block and yards were disappearing in some places and small shops being erected fronting on the street and backing on the handsome old houses.
Miss Lucy Leech’s remained intact, however. One fancied her house could no more put up a different front than Miss Lucy herself would. The house, a huge mansion with columned portico, was guarded by two peacefully inclined iron lions. Miss Lucy wore water waves, iron grey. She had always worn them through changing fashions of bangs, pompadours, and the marcel. The house had been originally painted grey, the lions black. Once in a decade Miss Lucy managed a new coat of paint. She would not have thought of changing the color of her house and the faithful lions any more than of giving her own respectable water waves a henna dip.
Miss Lucy’s back was straight and stiff; so was her upper lip. Her back was stiff because of the dignity of the Leeches, which she felt compelled to uphold. Her lip was stiff from necessity. Running a boarding house for almost half a century gives one “a stiff upper lip.” Running a boarding house had become second nature to Miss Lucy. It was as much a part of her as the iron grey waves in her hair. To be sure if it had not been for Mandy, the faithful cook, it would not have been such an easy matter to keep going. Mandy was cook and housekeeper as well. She it was who planned the meals and kept Miss Lucy from serving unbalanced rations to her select boarders.
“Lawsamussy, Miss Lucy, don’t go a-habin’ cabbage an’ cauliflowers de self-same meal. Deys one an’ de same ’cept cauliflowers am mo’ ’ristocratic an’ eddicated like. An’ fergetti, even when it’s got cheese on it, is kinder taterish in de way it sticks ter yo’ ribs, so when you ’lows you air gonter order fergetti I wouldn’t be havin’ scalloped taters.”
Aunt Mandy had never heard of calories and vitamins but she had a genius for food and Miss Lucy’s boarders appreciated the old cook’s prowess in the art and stayed on in the dilapidated old house, putting up with the old-fashioned plumbing and the one bath room with its rusty tin tub and many other inconveniences for the sake of Mandy’s culinary achievements.
“Sometimes I air fo’ced ter ’form miracles on de victuals,” Aunt Mandy had said once. “Miss Lucy air oftentimes fergitful in her orderation. I knows she gits in de market an’ gits ter talkin’ ’bout befo’ de wah an’ sech an’ boa’ders goes out’n her haid an’ mealtime comes ’round an’ I gotter stir up soup mostly out’n water but, lawsamussy, if’n you season up water right it’s tasty. Gumption air de maindes’ thing in cookin’. Gumption air mo’ ’liable dan ’gredients.”