In the ensuing two days Aladdin matured enormously, for though
a kind neighbor took him in, together with his brother Jack and
the yellow cat, he had suffered many things and already sniffed
the wolf at the door. The kind neighbor was a widow lady, whose
husband, having been a master carpenter of retentive habits,
had left her independently rich. She owned the white-and-green
house in which she lived, the plot of ground, including a small
front and a small back yard, upon which it stood, and she spent
with some splendor a certain income of three hundred and
eighty-two dollars a year. Every picture, every chair, every
mantelpiece in the Widow Brackett's house was draped with a
silk scarf. The parlor lamp had a glass shade upon which,
painted in oils, by hand, were crimson moss-roses and scarlet
poppies. A crushed plush spring rocker had goldenrod painted on
back and seat, while two white-and-gold vases in precise
positions on the mantel were filled with tight round bunches of
immortelles, stained pink. Upon the marble-topped,
carved-by-machine-walnut-legged table in the bay-window were
things to be taken up by a visitor and examined. A white plate
with a spreading of foreign postage-stamps, such as any boy
collector has in quantities for exchange, was the first
surprise: you were supposed to discover that the stamps were
not real, but painted on the plate, and exclaim about it. A
china basket contained most edible-looking fruit of the same
material, and a huge album, not to be confounded with the
family Bible upon which it rested, was filled with speaking
likenesses of the Widow Brackett's relatives. The Bible beneath
could have told when each was born, when many had died, and
where many were buried. But nobody was ever allowed to look