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Schum's old negro cook, who wore her feet wrapped in gunny sacking, and every odd and end that came down in the day's waste baskets, from empty spools to nubs of pencil, stored away in the kink of her hair, would somehow invariably send up the giblets along with the Beckers' Sunday allotment of chicken. Mr.
Schum's boarding house, her two chestnut braids rather precociously long and thick down her back, her mother rocking rhythmically overhead, were spurious to this narrative.
"No fair, Snow; that doesn't make sense." "Does." "Your turn, Roy." "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. Poor, callous-footed Mrs.
Mrs. Schum's boarding house, to the man, turned out to Lilly's High School graduation, Katy Stutz and Willie standing in the wings and all unwittingly visible from the house. A German-silver manicure set, handsomely embossed, bore the somewhat cryptic card, "To Lilly Becker, as she stands on the threshold of life, from her friends in the house."
It was amazing how light the imprint of Harry and his grandmother. Of effects there were practically none. A few tired-looking old dresses of Mrs. Schum's. Eleven dollars and some odd change in a tin box behind a clock. Harry's pinch-back suit with the slanting pockets. A daguerreotype or two. The inevitable stack of modest enough but unpaid bills. Odds. Ends.
One day by some mischievous mischance Mrs. Schum's board receipt found its way into Lilly's little pocketbook: Received of Mrs. Ben Becker, forty-five dollars for one month's board for three. "Aw," said the conductor, thrusting it back at her, "ask your mamma to tell her troubles to a policeman, little girl." From that day Lilly rebelled.
Spanish influenza, it was called, for no more visible reason than that it probably had its beginnings in Germany or India. On the Wednesday of Mrs. Schum's funeral five of the Amusement Enterprise office force were home with it, one little telephone operator, who occasionally laid the surreptitious offering of an orange or a carnation on Lilly's desk, succumbing.
There was a game Lilly used to play on the front stairs of Mrs. Schum's boarding house, winter evenings after dinner.
There were holes in the fabric of the story, obvious to any but Mrs. Schum's tired consciousness, and a too sudden inquiry could throw Lilly off her guard, but there was a flag with one shining service star glowing above the narrow bed, and evenings straight from the office Lilly would hasten to the hospital with fruits that could only be looked at, and newspapers to be unfurled and read.
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