"No; not with neighbors underneath."
He flopped down, hooking his heels in the chair-rung.
At sixteen's stage of cruel hazing into man's estate Edwin Ross, whose voice, all in a breath, could slip up from the quality of rock in the drilling to the more brittle octave of early-morning milk-bottles, wore a nine shoe and a thirteen collar. His first long trousers were let down and taken in. His second taken up and let out. When shaving promised to become a manly accomplishment, his complexion suddenly clouded, postponing that event until long after it had become a hirsute necessity. When he smiled apoplectically above his first waistcoat and detachable collar, his Adam's apple and his mother's heart fluttered.
"Blow-cat Dennis is going to City College."
"Who's he?"
"A feller."
"Quit crackin' your knuckles."
"He only got seventy in manual training."
"Tell them things to your father, Edwin; I 'ain't got the say-so."
"His father's only a bookkeeper, too, and they live 'way up on a Hundred and Forty-fourth near Third."