Through the Eye of the Needle eBook

The Makelys had no children, but it is seldom that the occupants of apartment-houses of a good class have children, though there is no clause in the lease against them.  I verified this fact from Mrs. Makely herself, by actual inquiry, for in all the times that I had gone up and down in the elevator to her apartment I had never seen any children.  She seemed at first to think I was joking, and not to like it, but when she found that I was in earnest she said that she did not suppose all the families living under that roof had more than four or five children among them.  She said that it would be inconvenient; and I could not allege the tenement-houses in the poor quarters of the city, where children seemed to swarm, for it is but too probable that they do not regard convenience in such places, and that neither parents nor children are more comfortable for their presence.

V

Comfort is the American ideal, in a certain way, and comfort is certainly what is studied in such an apartment as the Makelys inhabit.  We got to talking about it, and the ease of life in such conditions, and it was then she made me that offer to show me her flat, and let me report to the Altrurians concerning it.  She is all impulse, and she asked, How would I like to see it now? and when I said I should be delighted, she spoke to her husband, and told him that she was going to show me through the flat.  He roused himself promptly, and went before us, at her bidding, to turn up the electrics in the passages and rooms, and then she led the way out through the dining-room.

“This and the parlors count three, and the kitchen here is the fourth room of the eight,” she said, and as she spoke she pushed open the door of a small room, blazing with light and dense with the fumes of the dinner and the dish-washing which was now going on in a closet opening out of the kitchen.

She showed me the set range, at one side, and the refrigerator in an alcove, which she said went with the flat, and, “Lena,” she said to the cook, “this is the Altrurian gentleman I was telling you about, and I want him to see your kitchen.  Can I take him into your room?”

The cook said, “Oh yes, ma’am,” and she gave me a good stare, while Mrs. Makely went to the kitchen window and made me observe that it let in the outside air, though the court that it opened into was so dark that one had to keep the electrics going in the kitchen night and day.  “Of course, it’s an expense,” she said, as she closed the kitchen door after us.  She added, in a low, rapid tone, “You must excuse my introducing the cook.  She has read all about you in the papers—­you didn’t know, I suppose, that there were reporters that day of your delightful talk in the mountains, but I had them—­and she was wild, when she heard you were coming, and made me promise to let her have a sight of you somehow.  She says she wants to go and live in Altruria, and if you would