Read Online The House of All Sorts by Emily Carr - Free Book Online

to
like
you, you who hate her.”
    But did I hate the little girl with honey-coloured hair? She had cost me two tenants and no end of sleep, had heated my temper to boiling, yet, somehow I could not hate that baby. The meanest thing about her was the way she could make you feel yourself. One has to make a living and one must sleep. It is one of the crooked-nesses of life when a little yellow-haired baby can cause you so much trouble and yet won’t even let you hate her.
    Puss sailed off to her new home in a pram propelled by an angry parent.
    â€œTa ta,” she waved as they turned the corner—and I? I kissed my hand to Puss when her mother was not looking.

BACHELORS
    WHEN A FLAT housed a solitary bachelor, there was a curious desolation about it. The bachelor’s front door banged in the morning and again at night. All day long there was deadly stillness in that flat, that secret silence of “Occupied” emptiness, quite a different silence from “To Let” emptiness.
    Pedlars passed the flat without calling. The blinds dipped or were hoisted at irregular levels. Sometimes they remained down all day. Sometimes they were up all night. There were no callers and there was no garbage. Men ate out.
    Bachelors that rent flats or houses do so because they are home-loving; otherwise they would live in a boarding-house and be “done” for. They are tired of being tidied by landladies; they like to hang coats over chair backs and find them there when they come home. It is much handier to toss soiled shirts behind the dresser than to stuff them into a laundry bag; men do love to prowl round a kitchen. A gas stove, even if it is all dusty over the top from unuse, is home-like, so is the sink with its taps, the saucepan, the dishes. The men do not want to cook, but it is nice to know they could do so if they wished. In the evening, when I tended the furnace, I heard the bachelor tramp,tramp, tramping from room to room as if searching for something. This would have fidgeted a wife, but, if the bachelor had had a wife he would probably not have tramped.
    During the twenty-odd years that I rented apartments I housed quite a few bachelors. Generally they stayed a long while and their tenancy ended in marriage and in buying themselves a home.
    A BACHELOR OCCUPIED Lower West for several years. Big, pink and amiable, he gave no trouble. Occasionally his sister would come from another town to visit him. He boarded her with me up in my flat. I enjoyed these visits, so did her brother. I saw then how domestic and home-loving the man was. He loved his sister and was very good to my Bobtail dogs. Once the sister hinted—there
was
“somebody,” but, she did not know for certain; brother thought he was too old to marry—all fiddlesticks! She hoped he would. Therefore, I was not surprised when the bachelor came into my garden, and, ducking down among the dogs to hide how red he was, said, “I am going to be married. Am I an old fool?”
    â€œWise, I think.”
    â€œThank you,” he said, grinning all over—“I have been happy here.”
    He gave formal notice, saying, “I have bought a house.”
    â€œI hope you will be very happy.”
    â€œThanks. I think we shall.”
    He went to the garden gate, turned, such a sparkle in his eye it fairly lit the garden.
    â€œShe’s fine,” he said. “Not too young—sensible.”
    Then he bolted. I heard the door of his flat slam as if it wanted to shut him away from the temptation of babbling to the world how happy he was.
    The wedding was a month distant. During that month, when I tended the furnace there was no tramp, tramp, tramp overhead. I heard instead the contented scrunch, scrunch of his rocking chair.
    THE MORNING OF the wedding he bounded up my stair, most tremendously shaved and brushed, stood upon my doormat bashfully hesitant. I did not give him the chance to get any pinker before I said,