"TONY HE SELLA COAL WOOD ICE"
And from the rusty iron balcony hung a ragged pair of trousers into which had been inserted a board, the legs flapped dispiritedly in the gusty wind from the river. Painted in scraggling white paint across the seat of the trousers was written
"A. Cohen. Pressing 25 and 50 cents."
It was twilight. The tailor had lighted a single flickering gas jet beside the basement window. In the old days the front basement had been the housemaids' sitting room with a channel-coal fire glowing in the grate and a tidy white cloth on the table and neat rows of geraniums in the windows—a cheery sort of place. Not at all like this stuffy, overcrowded, ill ventilated place with the two silent shirt- sleeved men humped over steaming ironing boards and with a dozen more clattering away at noisy sewing machines.
A grizzled man scowled at her through thick glasses.
"Vell," he rasped, "Vat do you vant, madam?"
"I want to stay here."
"You vant to rent a room? I calls mine missus—" he called stridently,
"I think she gotta room for three dollars, I don' know—"
From the doorway of the once shining and immaculate kitchen a frowsy head protruded, "Four we should get," whined a nasal voice "it is only that it is on the top floor that we can make it so cheap—"
"This," announced Felicia to the slatternly woman "—is my house. How dare you let it get so dirty!"