Page:Zangwill-King of schnorrers.djvu/385

371 FLUTTER-DUCK. 371

the wall above this fire hung another mirror, — small and narrow, and full of wavering, watery reflections, — also framed in muslin, though this time the muslin served to conceal dirt, not to protect gilt. The kitchen-dresser, decorated with pink needle-work paper, was at right angles to the fireplace, and it faced the kitchen table, at which Flutter-Duck cleaned fish, peeled potatoes, and made meat kosher by salting and soaking it, as Rabbinic law demanded.

By the foot of the bed, in the narrow wall opposite the window, was a door leading to a tiny inner room. For years this door remained locked ; another family lived on the other side, and the furrier had neither the means nor the need for an extra bedroom. It was a room made for esca- pades and romances, connected with the back-yard by a steep ladder, up and down which the family might be seen going, and from which you could tumble into a broken- headed water-butt, or, by a dexterous back-fall, arrive in a dustbin. Jacob's ladder the neighbours called it, though the family name was Isaacs.

And over everything was the trail of the fur. The air was full of a fine fluff — a million little hairs floated about the room covering everything, insinuating themselves every- where, getting down the backs of the workers and tickling them, getting into their lungs and making them cough, get- ting into their food and drink and sickening them till they learnt callousness. They awoke with " furred " tongues, and they went to bed with them. The irritating filaments gathered on their clothes, on their faces, on the crockery, on the sofa, on the mirrors (big and little), on the bed, on the decanters, on the sheet that hid the Sabbath clothes — an impalpable down overlaying everything, penetrating even to the drinking-water in the board-covered zinc bucket, and