The House of All Sorts

Peach Scanties

COMING up Simcoe Street I stopped short and nearly strangled! There, stretched right across the front windows of the Doll's Flat, the street side of my respectable apartment house, dangled from the very rods where my fresh curtains had been when I went out--one huge suit of men's natural wool underwear, one pair of men's socks, one pair of women's emaciated silk stockings, a vest, and two pairs of peach scanties.

Who, I wondered, had gone up the street during the two hours of my absence? Who had seen my house shamed?

The woman shrugged.

On the third week she hung her wash in the windows the same as before. I gave her written notice.

Of course she was transient--here today, gone tomorrow--not caring a whoop about the looks of the place.

Next wash-day the same thing happened. The heavy woollies dripped and trickled over the tenant's clean washed windows below; of course she rushed up--furious as was I!

Merciful night came down and hid the scanties and the rest.

I pointed to the wash.

I could not get up the stairs fast enough, galloping all the way! There was only enough breath left for: "Please, please take them down."

Again I went to the Doll's Flat. I refused to go away until the washing was taken down and the curtains hung up. "If you live in this house you must comply with the ways of it," I said.

"You will, unless you take that wash down and never hang it on my curtain rods again!"

"There are lines out in the back."

"Thanks, I prefer them where they are. It is our flat. We have the right-"

"My wash is clean. It is darned. Let them mind their own business, and you yours."

"It is my business--this house is my livelihood."

"I will gladly take them down and hang them for you."

"I shall not go."

"I like our underwear sunned," she said with hauteur.

"I do not care for our clothes to mix with everybody's--and there are the stairs."

"But the appearance! The other tenants!"

Sullenly, she dragged the big woollen combination off the rod, threw it on the table; its arms and legs kicked and waved over the table's edge, then dangled dead. Down came the lank stockings, the undervest--last of all the peach scanties. Both pairs were fastened up by the same peg. She snapped it off viciously. A puff of wind from the open door caught and ballooned the scanties; off they sailed, out the window billowing into freedom. As they passed the hawthorn tree its spikes caught them. There they hung over my front gate, flapping, flapping--"Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!"