Katy Dempsey's mother kept a furnished-room house in this oasis of
the aliens. The business was not profitable. If the two scraped
together enough to meet the landlord's agent on rent day and
negotiate for the ingredients of a daily Irish stew they called it
success. Often the stew lacked both meat and potatoes. Sometimes it
became as bad as consomme with music.
In this mouldy old house Katy waxed plump and pert and wholesome and
as beautiful and freckled as a tiger lily. She was the good fairy who
was guilty of placing the damp clean towels and cracked pitchers of
freshly laundered Croton in the lodgers' rooms.
You are informed (by virtue of the privileges of astronomical
discovery) that the star lodger's name was Mr. Brunelli. His wearing
a yellow tie and paying his rent promptly distinguished him from the
other lodgers. His raiment was splendid, his complexion olive, his
mustache fierce, his manners a prince's, his rings and pins as
magnificent as those of a traveling dentist.
He had breakfast served in his room, and he ate it in a red dressing
gown with green tassels. He left the house at noon and returned
at midnight. Those were mysterious hours, but there was nothing
mysterious about Mrs. Dempsey's lodgers except the things that were
not mysterious. One of Mr. Kipling's poems is addressed to "Ye who
hold the unwritten clue to all save all unwritten things." The same
"readers" are invited to tackle the foregoing assertion.
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