From nine o'clock till dark the crowds
came and went. All Polk Street seemed to have invaded the suite, lured
on by the red flag that waved from the front windows. It was a fete, a
veritable holiday, for the whole neighborhood. People with no thought
of buying presented themselves. Young women--the candy-store girls and
florist's apprentices--came to see the fun, walking arm in arm from room
to room, making jokes about the pretty lithographs and mimicking the
picture of the two little girls saying their prayers.
"Look here," they would cry, "look here what she used for
curtains--NOTTINGHAM lace, actually! Whoever thinks of buying Nottingham
lace now-a-days? Say, don't that JAR you?"
"And a melodeon," another one would exclaim, lifting the sheet. "A
melodeon, when you can rent a piano for a dollar a week; and say, I
really believe they used to eat in the kitchen."
"Dollarn-half, dollarn-half, dollarn-half, give me two," intoned the
auctioneer from the second-hand store. By noon the crowd became a jam.
Wagons backed up to the curb outside and departed heavily laden. In
all directions people could be seen going away from the house, carrying
small articles of furniture--a clock, a water pitcher, a towel rack.
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