CHAPTER THREEAsking for It
Gamadge’s house was one of a row of three-story-and-basement brick dwellings, on the south side of the street in the east sixties. His next-door neighbour on the left, an architect named Briggs, had converted his two top floors into four one-room-and-bath flats, and himself lived and had his offices below. He was like Gamadge, devoted to his home and averse to change, and therefore struggled against certain plans of Gamadge’s which were laid before him in the late summer of 1949.
“If your family’s growing,” protested Briggs, who was a bachelor and fastidiously remote from such matters, “why don’t you move to the suburbs?”
“Clara and I don’t care for commuting.”
“I always understood,” said Briggs righteously, “that when people take on these responsibilities th
