“It will be cleaned thoroughly,” persisted Geary.  “The man will work at it until it is.  You can keep an eye on him and see that the work is done to suit you.”

“You see,” objected the burnisher’s wife, “I would want to move in right away.  I don’t want to wait all week for the man to get through.”

“But he is going to be through with this house to-night,” exclaimed Geary delighted.  “Come now, I know you want this cottage and I would like to have such nice-looking people have it.  I know you would make good tenants.  I can find lots of other tenants for this house, only you know how it is, a nasty, slovenly woman about the house and a raft of dirty children.  And you don’t like dirt, I can see that.  Better call it a bargain, and let it go at that.”

In the end the burnisher’s wife took the house.  Geary even induced her to deposit five dollars with him in order to secure it.

Vandover was down in the basement filling a barrel with the odds and ends of rubbish left by the previous tenants:  broken bottles, old corsets, bones, rusty bedsprings.  The dead hen he had taken out first of all, carrying it by one leg.  It was a gruesome horror, partly eaten by rats, swollen, abnormally heavy, one side flattened from lying so long upon the floor.  He could hardly stand; each time he bent over it seemed as though his backbone was disjointing.  After cleaning out the debris he began to sweep.  The dust was fearful, choking, blinding, so thick that he could hardly see what he was about.  By and by he dimly made out Geary’s figure in the doorway.

“Those people have taken the house,” he called out, “and I promised them you would be through with it by this evening.  So you want to stay with it now till you’re finished.  I guess there’s not much more to do.  Don’t forget the little garden in front.”

“No; I won’t forget!”

Geary went away, and for another hour Vandover kept at his work, stolidly, his mind empty of all thought, knowing only that he was very tired, that his back pained him.  He finished with the basement, but as he was pottering about the little garden, picking up the discoloured newspapers with which it was littered, the burnisher’s wife returned, together with her sister and the little boy; the little boy eating a slice of bread and butter.  They re-entered the house; Vandover heard their voices, now in one room, now in another.  They were looking over their future home again; evidently they lived close by.

Suddenly the burnisher’s wife came out upon the front steps, looking down into the little garden, calling for Vandover.  She was not pretty; she had a nose like a man and her chin was broad.

“Say, there,” she called to Vandover, “do you mean to say that you’ve finished inside here?”

“Yes,” answered Vandover, straightening up, nodding his head.  “Yes, I’ve finished.”

“Well, just come in here and look at this.”