oice.
"What _are_ we going to do?"

They walked along the Park, whispering over their unforeseen and
unforeseeable predicament. It had many aspects, their situation; it
was quickly clear to them that the most urgent aspect was the need of
immediate refuge. Other troubles and developments could be handled as
they arose, should any such arise. But a place to hide, to sleep, had
to be secured within the hour. Also they needed two or three days in
which to think matters over calmly, and to apply to them clear reason.
And they had only the fifteen dollars in Matilda's black bag.

"It seems to me, ma'am," ventured Matilda, "that a rooming-house or a
boarding-house would be cheapest."

"A boarding-house!" exclaimed Mrs. De Peyster. "But where?"

Matilda remembered and reached into her slit pocket. "Yesterday I
happened to pick up the card of a boarding-house in the library--I've
no idea how it came there. I saved it because my sister Angelica, who
lives in Syracuse, wrote me to look up a place where she might stay."

They examined the address upon the card, and twenty minutes later, now
close upon midnight, Matilda was pressing the bell of a house on the
West Side. Visible leadership Mrs. De Peyster had resigned to Matilda,
for they were entering a remote and lowly world whose ways Mrs.
De Peyster knew not. In all her life she had never been inside a
boarding-house.

The door opened slightly. A voice, female, interrogated Matilda. Then
they were admitted into a small hall, lighted by an electric bulb in
a lantern of stamped sheet-iron with vari-colored panes and portholes.
From this hall a stairway ascended, and from it was a view into a
small rear parlor, where sat a clergyman. The lady who had admitted
them was the mistress; a Junoesque, superior, languid sort of
personage, in a loose dressing-gown of pink silk with long train. To
her Matilda made known their desire.

"Excuse me, Mr. Pyecroft," she called to the clergyman. "So you and
your friend want board and room," the landlady repeated in a drawling
tone, yet studying them sharply with heavy-penciled eyes. "I run
a select house, so I've got to be careful about whom I admit.
Consequently you will not object to answering a few questions. You and
your friend are working-women?"

"Yes."

The heavy eyes had concluded their inventory. "Perhaps both
housekeepers?"

"Ye--yes."

Matilda had a double impulse to explain, first to clear Mrs. De
Peyster of this unmeri