She would hate those who had been born and made to the title, and
she would revert at times to common instincts with fierce anarchy.
But one must go forward before one can backslide, and Kedzie was
on the way up the slippery hill.
She had greatly improved the quality of her lodgings, her suitors,
and her clothes. Her photographic successes in risky exposures had
brought her a marked increase of wages. She wore as many clothes
as she could in private, to make up for her self-denial before
the camera. Her taste in dress was soubrettish and flagrant, but
it was not small-town. She was beginning to dislike ice-cream soda
and candy and to call for beer and Welsh rabbit. She would soon
be liking salads with garlic and Roquefort cheese in the dressing.
She was mounting with splendid assiduity toward the cigarette and
the high-ball. There was no stopping Kedzie. She kept rising on
stepping-stones of her dead selves.
Landladies are ladder-rungs of progress, too; Kedzie's history
might have been traced by hers.
Her camera career had led her from the flat of the delicatessen
merchant, through various shabby lairs, into the pension of a
vaudeville favorite of prehistoric fame. The house was dilapidated,
and the brownstone front had the moth-eaten look of the plush
furniture within.
Mrs. Jambers was as fat as if she fed on her own boarders, but she
was once no less a person than Mrs. Trixie Jambers Coogan, of Coogan
and Jambers.
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