There
was a drug store at the corner opposite them, but the park was
only a long block away, and the back rooms were flooded with
sunshine. Nancy had only two flights of stairs to climb, instead
of four, and plenty of room for the two cribs and the high chair.
Also she had room for Elite, the coloured girl who put herself at
the Bradleys' disposal for three dollars a week. Elite knew
nothing whatever, but she had willing hands and willing feet. She
had the sudden laugh of a maniac, but she held some strange power
over the Bradley babies and they obeyed her lightest word.
They moved on the day after Christmas, when Edward Barrett Bradley
was only three weeks old. Elite and Bert did the moving, and Nancy
only laughed weakly at their experiences. Junior contracted
chicken-pox during this time, and the family was quarantined on
New Year's Eve.
Bert and his wife celebrated the occasion with a quart of oysters,
eaten with hat-pins from a quart measure. The invalid slumbered in
the same room, behind a screen. He was having a very light attack,
and Nancy, who had been hanging over him all day, was reassured
to-night, and in wild spirits. She laughed the tears into her eyes
when Albert Senior, hearing the tentative horns at nine o'clock,
telephoned the fish market for the wherewithal to celebrate.
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