Our Little Life - A Novel Of To-Day

The acute angle formed by ONeil Street and Drayton Place there was, in the eighteen-sixties, a Ai cluster of houses that were good. The Agent, whenever he had occasion to advertise one of these houses in Regalias Daib A Planet was accustomed to say, , A Desirable Residence on ONeil Street--or Drayton Place, whichever it might happen to be-to Rent and forthwith came a rush of desirable citizens, each eager to get ahead of the other and occupy the house. But the eighteen-sixties are a long time ago. By the eighteeneighties the houses were no longer in such demand. By the time the nineties came along they were distinctly on the down grade-and with the end of the century they came more or less to an end too. Regalia had, like the generality of cities, stepped westward. Her citizens had stepped with her. They had begun their exodus when one of the great Railway Companies of the Dominion had placed its Yards straight opposite the ONeil Street windows. When a car-line was laid along the street, and another matched it on the parallel St. Hubert Boulevard-the main street of Regalia when Drayton Place, the short uniting link between the thoroughfares, came to be peopled with cut-rate drug-stores, corner groceries, demi-semirepair tailors, and dagos who stood at the doors of their Shoe-Shine Parlors showing their excellent teeth, it seemed time for desirable citizens to quit. They quitted. They packed up their belongings, their drawing-room suites and their leatherbacked dining-room chairs, and they betook themselves to where no car-lines are. They formed a desirable cluster in Regalia West, as they named the suburb they fled to and they left the ONeil Street homes alone, forlom, bereft of respectability, something that no desirable citizen would ever look at again. The houses stood empty, becoming less desirable every week. It was early in the twentieth century that a Business Woman 1 with a little money to invest, passed the ONeil Street way. She was desirous of finding a good investment for her hardearned money, something sure and safe yet bringing in a satisfactory yearly return. She paused before the ONeil Street houses. She thought she saw her investment there. Slowly she walked into Drayton Place and considered the houses from that point of view. More slowly she returned to ONeil Street, observing all the way. Next morning saw her at the down-town Agents, talking the matter over with him and the following week she was the possessor of the whole block of what had once been desirable residences, considering L with how little expenditure of her hard-earned money she could convert them into an Apartment House. This was rapidly done. Three months later she was christening th finished investment after herself. So Penelopes Buildings came into existence. The fact of the Buildings having begun life as a cluster of semi-detached dwelling-places explained certain odd constructions in the flats also the many undesired intimacies-common taps of water on the landings, verandas that belonged to everyone and no o n e t h a t the inhabitants so reluctantly shared with one another. The Apartment House was the u omfortable place it was because when it had been made over comfort had been the last thing in anyones mind. The Business Woman was wanting a good investment for her money. The Agent wanted to be rid of his property so as to get his percentage. The Builder x4anted to make his contract...