ap-suds.

"There's one thing, though, I won't stand for, and that's cigarettes.
I've had the last girl in my house that smokes cigarettes I'm going to
have. Look at that nice carpet! Look at it! All burned full of holes
where that trollop throwed her matches."

I hurried away, with a polite promise to consider the McGinniss
accommodations.

The abode of Mrs. Cunningham was but a few blocks away. Mrs. Cunningham
did not live in a flat, but in the comparative gentility of "up-stairs
rooms" over a gaudy undertaking establishment. She proved to be an Irish
lady with a gin-laden breath. Her eyes were blue and bleared, and looked
in kindly fashion through a pair of large-rimmed and much-mended
spectacles, from which one of the glasses had totally disappeared. She
was affable, and responded to my questions with almost maudlin
tenderness, calling me "dearie" throughout the interview. Her little
parlor was hung with chromo reproductions of great religious paintings,
and the close atmosphere was redolent of the heavy perfume of lilies
and stale tuberoses. Remarking the unusual prodigality of flowers, the
good lady explained that the undertaker beneath was in the habit of
showing his esteem by the daily tender of such funeral decorations as
had served their purpose. Mrs. Cunningham's accommodations at four
dollars per week were beyond my purse, however; but, as she was willing
to talk all day, my exit was made with difficulty.

The remainder of that day and a good part of the days that followed were
spent in interviewing all manner of landladies, most of whom, like Mrs.
McGinniss's bell, were disordered physically or mentally. Heartsick, I
decided by Saturday to take blind chances with the janitress of a
Fourteenth-street lodging-house. She had a cleft palate, and all I could
understand of her mutilated talk was that the room would be one dollar a
week with "light-housekeeping" privileges thrown in. I had either to pay
Miss Jamison another five dollars that next morning or take chances
here. I took the hazard, paid the necessary one dollar to the more or
less inarticulate woman, and went back to Miss Jamison's to get my
baggage and to eat the one dinner that was still due me--not forgetting
to leave a little note for the still absent Minnie Plympton, giving her
my new address.

III

I TRY "LIGHT" HOUSEKEEPING IN A FOURTEENTH-STREET LODGING-HOUSE

Bedtime found me thoroughly settled in my new quarters, and myself in