“Blood is thicker than water, Mrs. Friend,” he declared sternly, and forthwith carted Florrie to Isobel’s in Venice Corners, and escorted the older two up to Cleveland as a surprise to their grandmother.

He did not fully explain his reasons for breaking with the Friends, but hinted that it was a religious matter.

“She was bringing them up Catholics,” he said, and Mrs. Carmel, present at the time, was even more horrified than Grandma, and promised a safe refuge here from popery, every opportunity on the other hand to attend the beautiful new churches for Christian Science and Spiritualism. Harry, with grave injunctions for them to go to whatever Sunday school Grandma suggested—but, please, no rosaries for Mama’s sake—then departed on a business engagement with his friend Hartwell, whose main factory was fortunately right on Hodge Street.

Hodge Street was barely half a dozen blocks from the public square and not far from the lake docks. While some carping souls would not have regarded Hodge (including Hodge Lane, Hodge Court, and Hodge Alley) as a proper location for the rearing of children, Marcia and Lena found it ideal, with the constant noise of trains reminiscent of London Junction, the froggy boat whistles, and the fragrant presence of the Eugenia Candy Factory, which perfumed the very air they breathed with fumes of sweet chocolate. Up and down side streets off Hodge were rooming houses whose tenants varied from genteel widows with pensions to shrill females who sat on the narrow porches in Japanese kimonos and kid curlers till dusk. “Light housekeepers,” Grandma called them. These females kept the porch blinds discreetly low, and were prone to hastily pull their kimonos together at a man’s approach, but this pious symptom of modesty never carried itself to the point of going indoors and dressing. Such a step would have meant losing a few neighbors’ remarks, missing a street accident, or being the butt of gossip oneself. These ladies preserved their social standing by referring to each other as Mrs. M., Mrs. B., Mrs. R., and so on, as if the full use of the last name was too great a liberty. They were mostly of middle age, and although they maintained a well-bred reserve about their earlier life and never “gave away” anything, there must have been a basic similarity in all their experiences to have brought them to the same tastes and same habits. Whenever anyone passed, these females hushed up, but barely had the somewhat self-conscious passerby got out of hearing before every detail of costume and bearing was laid open to discussion. The high standards of fashion and figure verbally expressed by these ladies was particularly surprising, since they themselves so rarely put on a corset or dress, though to hear their morning critical consideration of the May Company advertisements you would have imagined they were about to make some impressive purchases that very day.

It was Grandma’s habit to go down one of these side streets and back the other on her marketing in order to exchange a little gossip with as many of these ladies as possible. She was sorry that the purifying presence of her grandchildren limited the scope of her own roomers’ conversation. Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Benton (better known as Mrs. M. and Mrs. B.) lapsed into morose silence when Marcia and Lena took over the porch as playground. With their bare feet usually adorned with Blue Jay corn-plasters, thrust in lopsided worn mules, they clattered in to Grandma often to complain that the doll clothes, banana peels, and orange rinds scattered over the porch made the place “not look nice,” particularly since this was Hodge Street proper and not one of its cheaper tributaries.