``How you going to work with a child hanging on you?'' he asked Leona. ``You want to keep this job, don't you?'' He doubted whether she heard him, over the running water.

He sat for a while with his hands on his knees, watching the bend of her back as she gathered up her things -- a comb, a bottle of aspirin -- to take upstairs and pack. She made him sad some days, and he was never sure why; it was something to do with her back, the thinness of it, and the quick, jerky way she bent. She was too young, that was all; too young and thin and straight.

``Winston!''

It was Mr. Jack, bellowing out in the hall. Winston hurried through the swinging door. ``I've been bursting my lungs for you,'' Mr. Jack complained. He was standing in front of the mirror, tightening his tie. He had on his gray tweed overcoat and his city hat, and his brief case lay on the bench. ``I don't know what you think you've been doing about my clothes,'' he said. ``This coat looks like a rag heap.''

There were a few blades of lint on the shoulder. Winston took the clothesbrush out of the closet and went to work. He gave Mr. Jack a real going over; he brushed his shoulders and his back and his collar with long, firm strokes. ``Hey!'' Mr. Jack cried when the brush tipped his hat down over his eyes.

Winston apologized and quickly set the hat right. Then he stood back to look at Mr. Jack, who was pulling on his pigskin gloves. Winston enjoyed seeing him start out; he wore his clothes with style. When he was going to town, nothing was good enough -- he had cursed at Winston once for leaving a fleck of polish on his shoelace. At home, he wouldn't even wash his hands for supper, and he wandered around the yard in a pair of sweaty old corduroys. The velvet smoking jackets, pearl gray, wine, and blue, which Miss Ada had bought him hung brushed and unworn in the closet.