“Well, Oscar, I’ve taken the house!” said his wife to the burnisher as he came up the steps.  “But I couldn’t get him to say that he’d let me have it for fifteen, water included.  The landlord himself, Mr. Geary, was here to-day and I made the dicker with him.  He’s had a man here all day cleaning up.”  She explained the bargain, the burnisher approving of everything, nodding his head continually.  His wife showed him about the house, her sister and the little boy following in silence.  “He’s a good landlord, I guess,” continued the young woman; “anybody in the row will tell you that, and he means to keep his houses in good repair.  Now you see, here’s the kitchen.  You see how big it is.  Here’s our laundry tubs, our iron sink, our boiler, and everything we want.  It’s all as clean as a whistle; and get on to this big cubby under the sink where I can stow away things.”  She opened its door to show her husband, but all at once straightened up, exclaiming, “Well, dear me suz—­did you ever see anything like that?” The cubby under the sink was abominably dirty.  Vandover had altogether forgotten it.

The little burnisher himself bent down and peered in.

“Oh, that’ll never do!” he cried.  “Has that man gone home yet?  He mustn’t; he’s got to clean this out first!” He had a weak, faint voice, small and timid like his figure.  He hurried out to the front door and called Vandover back just as he was going down the steps.  The two went back into the kitchen and stood in front of the sink.  “Look under there!” piped the burnisher.  “You can’t leave that, that way.”

“You know,” protested his wife, “that this all was to be done to our satisfaction.  Mr. Geary said so.  That’s the only way I came to take the house.”

“It’s about six o’clock, though,” observed her fat sister, who smelt of cooked cabbage.  “Perhaps he’d want to go home to his dinner.”  But at this both the others cried out in one voice, the burnisher exclaiming:  “I can’t help that, this has got to be done first,” while his wife protested that she couldn’t naturally stand dirt, adding, “This all was to be done to our satisfaction, and we ain’t satisfied yet by a long shot.”  Delighted at this excitement, the little boy forgot to eat into his bread and butter, rolling his eyes wildly from one to the other, still silent.

Meanwhile, without replying, Vandover had gone down upon the floor again, poking about amid the filth under the sink.  The four others, the burnisher, his wife, his sister-in-law and his little boy, stood about in a half-circle behind him, seeing to it that he did the work properly, giving orders as to how he should proceed.

“Now, be sure you get everything out that’s under there,” said the burnisher.  “Ouf! how it smells!  They made a regular dump heap of it.”