"Not if you gimme the pistol," said Nance.
When he was gone, she picked up the shining weapon and gingerly dropped it out on the adjoining roof. Then her knees felt suddenly wobbly, and she sat down. What if she had been a minute later and Mr. Snawdor had pulled the trigger? She shivered as her quick imagination pictured the scene. If Mr. Snawdor felt like that about it, there was but one thing to do; to get things cleaned up and try to keep them so.
Feeling very important and responsible, she swept and straightened and dusted, while her mind worked even faster than her nimble hands. Standards are formed by comparisons, and so far Nance's opportunity for instituting comparisons had been decidedly limited.
"We ain't pore white, no such a thing!" she kept saying to herself. "Our house ain't no worser nor nobody else's. Mis' Smelts is just the same, an' if Levinski's is cleaner, it smells a heap worse."
Dinner was over before Mrs. Snawdor returned. She came into the kitchen greatly ruffled as to hair and temper from having been caught by the hook left hanging over the banisters by William J.
"Gimme the rocker!" she demanded. "My feet hurt so bad I'd just like to unscrew 'em an' fling 'em in the dump heap."
"Where you been at?" asked Uncle Jed, who was cutting himself a slice of bread from the loaf.
"I been down helpin' the new tenant move in on the first floor."
"Any childern?" asked Nance and Lobelia in one breath.
"No; just a foreign-lookin' old gentleman, puttin' on as much airs as if he was movin' into the Walderastoria. Nobody knows his name or where he comes from. Ike Lavinski says he plays the fiddle at the theayter. Talk about your helpless people! I had to take a hand in gettin' his things unloaded. He liked to never got done thankin' me."
Mr. Snawdor, who had been sitting in dejected silence before his untouched food, pushed his plate back and sighed deeply.
"Now, fer heaven sake, Snawdor," began his wife in tones of exasperation, "can't I do a kind act to a neighbor without a-rufflin' yer feathers the wrong way?"
"I cleaned up yer room while you was gone," said Nance, eager to divert the conversation from Mr. Snawdor. "Uncle Jed an' me carried the trash down an' it filled the ash barrel clean up to the top."