ling with infantile diffidence, "you dunt want no ref'ence?"

"No," said John, generously, "oh, no; we can trust each other that far,
eh?"

"Oh, yes?" replied the sweet creature; then suddenly changing
countenance, as though she remembered something. "But daz de troub'--de
room not goin' be vacate for t'ree mont'."

She stretched forth her open palms and smiled, with one arm still around
the bedpost.

"Why," exclaimed Mrs. Richling, the very statue of astonishment, "you
said just now we could have it at once!"

"Dis room? _Oh_, no; nod _dis_ room."

"I don't see how I could have misunderstood you."

The landlady lifted her shoulders, smiled, and clasped her hands across
each other under her throat. Then throwing them apart she said
brightly:--

"No, I say at Madame La Rose. Me, my room is all fill'. At Madame La
Rose, I say, I think you be pritty well. I'm shoe you be verrie well
at Madame La Rose. I'm sorry. But you kin paz yondeh--'tiz juz ad the
cawneh? And I am shoe I think you be pritty well at Madame La Rose."

She kept up the repetition, though Mrs. Richling, incensed, had turned
her back, and Richling was saying good-day.

"She did say the room was vacant!" exclaimed the little wife, as they
reached the sidewalk. But the next moment there came a quick twinkle
from her eye, and, waving her husband to go on without her, she said,
"You kin paz yondeh; at Madame La Rose I am shoe you be pritty sick."
Thereupon she took his arm,--making everybody stare and smile to see a
lady and gentleman arm in arm by daylight,--and they went merrily on
their way.

The last place they stopped at was in Royal street. The entrance
was bad. It was narrow even for those two. The walls were stained by
dampness, and the smell of a totally undrained soil came up through the
floor. The stairs ascended a few steps, came too near a low ceiling, and
shot forward into cavernous gloom to find a second rising place
farther on. But the rooms, when reached, were a tolerably pleasant
disappointment, and the proprietress a person of reassuring amiability.

She bestirred herself in an obliging way that was the most charming
thing yet encountered. She gratified the young people every moment
afresh with her readiness to understand or guess their English queries
and remarks, hung her head archly when she had to explain away little
objections, delivered her No sirs with gravity and her Yes sirs with
bright eagerness, shook her head slowly