Free The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place by E.L. Konigsburg

replied, “I won’t be giving it up, I’ll be filling it up.”
    I wanted to throw my arms around him and kiss him, and I would have if I had not wanted to so badly.

ten
    W e ate in the kitchen. For as long as I could remember, the Uncles had never dined in their dining room, so the four of us crowded around an old enamel-top table. We sat on wooden folding chairs that had not been manufactured since the invention of plastic. The slats were scratched, and their color had mellowed beyond yellow to mustard. But there was a linen cloth on the table. The napkins were linen too. The dishes were china; the glasses, crystal; and the silverware was sterling. The food was served family-style from antique tureens and platters and presented with a panache that would have been the pride of any four-star restaurant in Epiphany—if Epiphany had had a four-star restaurant.
    Jake could hardly wait to find out more about the towers. He started by asking when they got started.
    Morris was pleased that he had asked
when
and not
why.
There was no
why.
“It was a long time ago,” he said. “I started shortly after we bought the house.”
    â€œIt was a Glass house,” Uncle Alex added.
    â€œA glass house made of wood?” Jake asked.
    â€œA Glass house because it was built by the Tappan Glass Works.”
    Uncle Morris said, “I didn’t hear this man ask you who built the house. I thought I heard him ask
when
did we start the towers.”
    Looking sheepish, Uncle Alex answered, “He did. He asked
when.”
    â€œCan I continue?”
    â€œYou can, and you may.”
    â€œSo, if I
may,”
Uncle Morris said, casting fish-eyes at his brother. “I started shortly after we moved into the house. Wilma, my wife, had died. I wanted to do something. I didn’t even know what. I just knew it was not going to be small like a watch or exact like a clock. So one day I started. What I was building, I wasn’t sure. An idea I had, but not a plan; so even before I decided what it was I was doing, I found out. I was building towers. They became as they grew.”
    â€” the Glass house
    Like every other house in the neighborhood, the house at 19 Schuyler Place had been built and owned by the Tappan Glass Works. The company rented them to its workers until the factory was moved to the other side of the lake. Then the houses were sold. Like the Uncles, most of the people who bought
them were immigrants to whom owning a home meant owning a piece of America.
    Every house was tall and narrow and faced the street straight on. Every house had a front porch with four steps leading up to it, a mailbox nailed to the wall by the front door, and a metal box that sat on the floor of the porch near the steps. Milkmen delivered milk in glass bottles into the metal boxes, and mailmen carried heavy leather pouches that they lightened, one letter at a time, as they walked up and then down each flight of front porch steps.
    The neighbors helped each other out in the small ways that neighbors can and the ways that friendly ones do. They held keys to each others’ houses, and borrowed cups of sugar and shared cookies, casseroles, and the produce from their gardens.
    They called each other “Mr.” and “Mrs.”
    Mr. and Mrs. Bevilaqua lived at 17 Schuyler Place, and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderwaal lived at number 21.
    Alex said, “We had once a jewelry store downtown, only one block away from Town Square. We called our store Jewels Bi-Rose. We loved the name.
Bi
was a play on English words.
B-I
means
two
and is also a homonym for
buy, B-U-Y,
and for
B-Y”
    Morris pointed his chin in his brother’s direction. “That one took care of the crystal and china. We had abridal registry. I took care of the fine jewelry and watches.”
    Alex added, “Business at Jewels Bi-Rose was very personal. Half the diamond engagement rings and place settings of china sold in Epiphany came from