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Pa had two manias: the movies, and a passion for purchasing new and complicated household utensils cream-whippers, egg-beaters, window-clamps, lemon-squeezers, silver-polishers. He haunted department store basements in search of them. He opened his paper now and glanced at the head-lines and at the Monday morning ads. "I see the Fair's got a spring housecleaning sale.
She fell into a reverie, repeating dreamily to herself the words "a little child " and Martie, dreaming, too, was silent. The two women were in one of the cool back bedrooms. For hot still blocks all about the houses were just the same; some changed into untidy flats, some empty, some with little shops or agencies in their basements, and some, like this one, second-class boarding-houses.
Some timorously descended their doorsteps, and feeling a current of water in the gutter, recoiled with cries of horror, as if they had slipped down the bank of a flooded river. As they retreated they believed that the water was rising at their heels! Others made their way to the roofs, persuaded that the flood was already inundating the basements and the lower stories of their dwellings.
It possessed the massive portico and the imposing frontage that lend to Hellier Crescent its air of dignified repose; but there its similarity to the surrounding dwellings ended. The basement sent forth no glow of warmth and comfort, as did the neighboring basements; the ground-floor windows permitted no ray of mellow light to slip through the chinks of shutter or curtain.
Faint sounds of footsteps below guided him, and although from all outward seeming he appeared to saunter casually down, his left hand was clutching the butt of a Colt automatic. He presently found himself in a maze of basements kitchens of the establishment, no doubt. The sound of footsteps no longer guided him.
They leave no space unoccupied: they rent sheds, basements and even cellars to families and lodgers; they divide rooms by partitions, and then place a whole family in a single room, to be used for living, cooking, and sleeping purposes.
There is no portion of the city set aside for the rich or the poor. People of means, of education, and of refinement live in the upper stories. The poor live in crowded rooms and patios, and in basements or in dirty alleys. Many of the wealthy, fashionable people live in the pretty suburban towns. Others, who are engaged in business in the cities, live over their stores, on the second floor.
The basements were given over to boiler rooms, laundry tubs, and storerooms, linked by long, twisting, badly lighted corridors which formed excellent hiding places for the boys in time of pursuit. The gang gathered noisily just off the corner and waited for victims. A gray-haired, poorly clad woman shuffled past. Sid raised his arm. Silvey whispered a protest. "That's old lady Allen.
The agents in a number of cases found employees packed "like sardines in a box;" thirty-five persons, for example, in a small attic without ventilation of any kind. Some were in very low-studded rooms, with no ventilation save from windows, causing bad draughts and much sickness, and others in basements where dampness was added to cold and bad air.
"Well," she began, "those high steps that they all have, unless they're English-basement houses, really give them another story, for people used to dine in the front room of their basements. You've noticed the little front yard, about as big as a handkerchief, generally, and the steps leading down to the iron gate, which is kept locked, and the basement door inside the gate?