There was a game Lilly used to play on the front stairs of Mrs. Schum's boarding house, winter evenings after dinner. She and Lester Eli, who, at seventeen, was to drown in a pleasure canoe; Snow Horton—clandestinely present—daughter of a neighborhood dentist and forbidden to play with the "boarding-house children"; Flora and Roy Kemble, twins; and little Harry Calvert, who would creep up like a dirty little white mouse from the basement kitchen.
"C"—hissed sibilantly.
"Can't carry cranky cats!"
"No fair, Snow; that doesn't make sense."
"Does."
"Your turn, Roy."
"Z."
"No fair. Nothing begins with 'Z.'"
LILLY: "Does so. Z! Z—zounds—zippy—zingorella—zoe! Zoe!"
By similar strain of alliterative classification, Mrs. Schum's boarding house might have been indexed as Middle West, middle class, medium price, and meager of meal.