Mrs. Jane was a thin, flabby woman of forty-five, with a putty-colored face, liverish lips permanently curled up in what was meant to be a heartening smile, ready to widen into a merry cackle the more honest because it revealed palate, bridgework, and tonsils without affectation. A tendency to jaundice gave a yellow cast to her eyeballs and patches of brown spots on her lean neck. She had a high, little girl voice and a way of fondly cocking her head to one side, but this coquettish effect was only to reassure the suspicious, and not to lure the opposite sex, because, goodness knows, as she made haste to explain to Papa, none of her men lodgers needed to worry about her setting after them. She’d had her chances, still had; but just because she felt sorry for a nice looking young man with three motherless children didn’t mean she was looking for a man. Papa said a woman with her figure didn’t need to look far and she agreed that he had certainly said it. Mrs. Jane spoke often with pleasure of her figure, though it was seldom revealed to proper advantage. She wore a bungalow apron and lace boudoir cap for marketing, since her head was always armored in steel curlers. For household chores she wrapped her head in whatever dustcap, towel, or napkin was handy, and shuffled around in bedroom slippers, bare legs, and a ragged crepe kimono, flowery sleeves pinned back on her shoulder. This working costume gave an impression of slavish domesticity, but like many a dustcloth around the head often indicated merely that there was a lot of work to be done but not right now. A scrubbing pail of suds was usually abandoned on the hall steps; a mop, broom, or carpet sweeper leaned against a door to clout the unsuspecting as they entered; a dustpan of debris sometimes sat all day on a stair step; a washing half done in the backyard, a stew burning dry on her stove—these were ambitious projects started at breakfast by Mrs. Jane and deserted for others that occurred to her: an attic cleaning, a bargaining tour of the markets. Lodgers commented on Mrs. Jane’s industry when they saw her implements about, and Mrs. Jane, possibly abandoning all for the daily paper in the porch rocker, would reply in a cheery whine, “Woman’s work is never done.” This uproarious mot sent her into peals of laughter.

A great deal of Mrs. Jane’s time was spent in locating her pet, a large tiger cat appropriately named Tommy. Her voice could be heard wailing, “Tommy! Tommy! Where are you, Tommy dear? Come, Tommy!” from morning to midnight, and scarcely a day passed that she did not have a few hours’ anguished conviction that Tommy had been stolen or run over. The cat’s chief pleasure seemed to be in providing this daily drama for his fond mistress. During her distracted calls and search for him, often accompanied by sobs, Tommy lay blinking under the porch or on the roof, observing her frenzy with what might be a sardonic masculine smile, and after pleasuring himself with the sight of his dear madam making a fool of herself over him he stretched himself and ambled leisurely to his cushion on the back stairs where, in due time, she would find him manicuring his nails and tidying his whiskers as if nothing had happened.