"
"Must have been brought up on printed menu-cards," one of the
other women at our table commented, with a laugh
"That's right," Mrs. Kalch assented, appreciatively. "I could not say
whether her father was a horse-driver or a stoker in a bath-house,
but I do know that her husband kept a coal-and-ice cellar a few
years ago."
"That'll do," her bewhiskered husband snarled. " "It's about time
you gave your tongue a rest."
Auntie Yetta's golden teeth glittered good-humoredly. The next
instant she called my attention to a woman who, driven to despair
by the superiority of her "bosom friend's" gowns, had gone to the
city for a fortnight, ostensibly to look for a new flat, but in reality
to replenish her wardrobe. She had just returned, on the big
"husband train," and now "her bosom friend won't be able to eat or
sleep, trying to guess what kind of dresses she brought back."
Nor was this the only kind of gossip upon which Mrs. Kalch
regaled me. She told me, for example, of some sensational
discoveries made by several boarders regarding a certain mother
of five children, of her sister who was "not a bit better," and of a
couple who were supposed to be man and wife, but who seemed
to be "somebody else's man and somebody else's wife.
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