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, straight