An alarm-clock on a small shelf edged in scalloped white oilcloth ticked with spick-and-span precision into a kitchen so correspondingly spick and span that even its silence smelled scoured, rows of tins shining into it. A dun-colored kind of dusk, soot floating in it, began to filter down the air-shaft, dimming them.
Mrs. Ross lowered the shade and lighted the gas-jet. So short that in the long run she wormed first through a crowd, she was full of the genial curves that, though they bespoke three lumps in her coffee in an elevator and escalator age, had not yet reached uncongenial proportions. In fact, now, brushing with her bare forearm across her moistly pink face, she was like Flora, who, rather than fade, became buxom.
A door slammed in an outer hall, as she was still stirring and looking down into the stew.
"Edwin!"
"Yes, mother."
"Don't track through the parlor."
"Aw!"
"You hear me?"
"I yain't! Gee, can't a feller walk?"
"Put your books on the hat-rack."