FROM THE LIFE
for a public library, two were boarding-houses, and another had put on a false front and become a milliner's shop. But Leedy Street was beyond the pale. There was not only a livery-stable on it; there was a plumber's shop, a coal-yard, and a brick terrace where day-laborers lived. It was not to be expected that a family on High Street would associate with one on Leedy, even though their dormer-windows gabled out of the one roof.
And the Furnesses did not really associate with any one in Centerbrook. They lived in the same general world as the other commuters, belonged distantly to the same country club, played silent golf on the same club links, and prayed regularly to the same Deity. But, under Providence, all their aims in life were as palpably alien to the Centerbrook commuters as the Gorman aimlessness was repellent to the coal-yard proprietor.
4
To him the Furnesses were "the stuffed-heart aristocracy" and Con was "no good for anything." He had all a Benjamin Franklin's practical contempt for them both. Out of that contempt he proceeded to tell me why he had discharged Con after a week's trial in his coal-office. I was confused by a vague recollection of a report that Con had said he was fired for refusing to give a customer short weight. Centerbrook is full of such gossip about its shopkeepers. It is the way the impotent commuter
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