CHAPTER IV

Rain was falling in such sweeping sheets that the windows actually shook under the onslaught; all day long a high wind had raged about the house.  Above the noise of the November storm in the warm basement bedroom rose the steady click and purr of the sewing-machine and the chattering of a child’s voice, and from outside, on the pavement, was a furious rushing of coal.  The big van had been backed up against the curb, and the cascading black torrent interrupted the passers-by.

“Heavens!  Was there ever such an uproar!” exclaimed Martie, ceasing her operations at the machine and leaning back in her chair with a long sigh.  The lengths of flimsy white curtaining she had been hemming slipped to the floor; she put her hands behind her head, and yawned luxuriously.  The room was close, and even at four o’clock there was need of lights; its other occupants were only two, the child who played with the small gray and red stone blocks upon the floor, and the old woman who was peering through her glasses at the curtaining that lay across her lap, and manipulating it with knotted hands.  Mrs. Curley was “Nana” to little Teddy Bannister now, and this shabby room overlooking a cemented area, and with its windows safeguarded by curved ornamental iron bars from attack from the street, would be his first memory of life.

But it was a comfortable room; once the dining room, it had been changed and papered and carpeted for its present tenants when Martie, as housekeeper of the boarding-house, had decided to move the dining room into the big, useless rear parlour upstairs.  She and Teddy had privacy here; they had plenty of room, and the feet that crisped by on the sidewalk, the noises from the kitchen behind her, and the squeaking of rats about the basement entrance at night annoyed her not at all.  She had her own telephone here, her own fireplace, and she was comfortably accessible for the maids—­there were two maids now—­for the butcher and ice-man.  Between her and the kitchen was a small dark space, named by herself the “Cold Lairs,” where she had a wash-stand and a small bath-tub.  A bead of gas burned here night and day, but if Teddy ever became really naughty he was to be placed in here as punishment and the gas turned out entirely.  Teddy had never deserved this terrible fate, but he did not like the Cold Lairs, where his little crash wash-rag and his tiny toothbrush glimmered at him in the half-light, and where he always smelled the raw smell of the lemon his mother kept to whiten her hands.