"Why, we live in a stationary wash-tub," I said, smiling.

The woman looked at me steadfastly for a minute, and then she rose
to her feet. Then she called out, as if she were crying fish or
strawberries:

"Mrs. Blaine!"

The female keeper of the intelligence office, and the male keeper,
and a thin clerk, and all the women in the back room, and all the
patrons in the front room, jumped up and gathered around us.

Astonished and somewhat disconcerted, I rose to my feet and
confronted the tall Irishwoman, and stood smiling in an uncertain
sort of a way, as if it were all very funny; but I couldn't see the
point. I think I must have impressed the people with the idea that
I wished I hadn't come.

"He says," exclaimed the woman, as if some other huckster were
crying fish on the other side of the street--"he says he lives in a
wash-toob."

"He's crazy!" ejaculated Mrs. Blaine, with an air that indicated
"policeman" as plainly as if she had put her thought into words.

A low murmur ran through the crowd of women, while the thin clerk
edged toward the door.

I saw there was no time to lose. I stepped back a little from the