Read "The Walls of Jericho" by Rudolph Fisher online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The thrill and terror of a house fire so uncomfortably close by had been a little too much for Miss Agatha Cramp. Even now, a week after the night of the uproar, she was still having breakfast in bed. Every time she thought of the excitement -- the smoke, filling the quiet neighborhood before anyone suspected its origin, the long wait for the engines while the flames gained headway, the shriek, roar and clangor of arriving fire trucks, men shouting, thumping her own front door, yelling for admittance, dragging hose line through her house to the roof -- she had to suppress shudders and draw deep breaths. It was a shattering ordeal.
She said as much this morning over her tray to her new Irish maid, Mary. Mary, an extremely acquiescent person, answered solidly, "Yes'm."