The very East
Sixties began to smell.
When a strangely larger-eyed, strangely thinner, a whitened and somehow
a tightened Stella Schump drew up, those ten days later, before the
little old row with the little old iron balconies, there was already in
the ridiculous patches of front yards a light-green powdering of grass,
and from the doorbell of her own threshold there hung quite a little
spray of roses, waxy white against a frond of fern and a fold of black.
Deeper within that threshold, at the business of flooding its floor with
a run of water from a tipped pail and sweeping harshly into it, was the
vigorous, bony silhouette of Mrs. O'Connor, landlady.
For the second that it took her presence to be felt, Miss Schump stood
there trembling, all of a sudden more deeply and more rapidly. Then,
Mrs. O'Connor leaned out, bare arms folded atop her broom.
"So!" she said, a highly imperfect row of lower teeth seeming to jut
out, and her voice wavy with brogue and vibrant to express all its
scorn. "So!"
"Mrs. O'Connor--"
"So! Ye've come back in time for the buryin'! Faith, an' it's a foine
toime for the showin'-up of the chief mourner! Faith now it is!"
"Mrs.
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