en rented (furnished) from a lady
who turned out to be from Des Moines.

When they arrived, Pinky had four apartments waiting for their
inspection. She told them this in triumph and well she might, it being
the winter after the war when New York apartments were as scarce as
black diamonds and twice as costly.

Father Brewster, on hearing the price, emitted a long low whistle and
said: "How many rooms did you say?"

Two--and a kitchenette, of course."

"Well, then, all I can say is the furniture ought to be solid gold for
that; inlaid with rubies and picked out with platinum."

But it wasn't. In fact, it wasn't solid anything, being mostly of a very
impermanent structure and style. Pinky explained that she had kept the
best for the last. The thing that worried Father Brewster was that, no
matter at what hour of the day they might happen to call on the
prospective lessor, that person was always feminine and hatted. Once it
was eleven in the morning. Once five in the afternoon.

"Do these New York women wear hats in the house all the time?" demanded
Hosea Brewster worriedly. "I think they sleep in 'em. It's a wonder they
ain't bald. Maybe they are. Maybe that's why. Anyway, it makes you feel
like a book agent."

He sounded excited and tired. "Now, father!" said Mrs. Brewster,
soothingly.

They were in the elevator that was taking them up to the fourth and
(according to Pinky) choicest apartment. The building was what is known
as a studio apartment, in the West Sixties. The corridors were done in
red flagstones, with grey-tone walls. The metal doors were painted grey.

Pinky was snickering. "Now she'll say: 'Well, we've been very
comfortable here.' They always do. Don't look too eager."

"No fear," put in Hosey Brewster.

"It's really lovely. And a real fireplace. Everything new and good.
She's asking two hundred and twenty-five. Offer her one seventy-five.
She'll take two hundred"

"You bet she will," growled Hosea.

She answered the door--hatted; hatted in henna, that being the season's
chosen colour. A small dark foyer, overcrowded with furniture; a studio
living-room, bright, high-ceilinged, smallish; one entire side was
window. There were Japanese prints, and a baby grand piano, and a lot of
tables, and a davenport placed the way they do it on the stage, with its
back to the room and its arms to the fireplace, and a long table just
behind it, with a lamp on it, and books, and a dull jar thing, just as