own eyes set wide apart, a perpetual frown, and a chin
so long and so projected that she was almost jimber-jawed. While
Susan explained stammeringly what she had come for, Mrs. Wylie
eyed her with increasing disfavor. When Susan had finished, she
unlocked her lips for the first time to say:

"The room's took."

"Oh!" cried Susan in dismay.

The telephone rang in the back parlor. Mrs. Wylie excused
herself to answer. After a few words she closed the doors
between. She was gone fully five minutes; to Susan it seemed an
hour. She came back, saying:

"I've been talking to my nephew. He called up. Well, I reckon
you can have the room. It ain't my custom to take in ladies as
young as you. But you seem to be all right. Your parents allowed
you to come?"

"I haven't any," replied Susan. "I'm here to find a place and
support myself."

Mrs. Wylie continued to eye her dubiously. "Well, I have no wish
to pry into your affairs. 'Mind your own business,' that's my
rule." She spoke with defiance, as if the contrary were being
asserted by some invisible person who might appear and gain
hearing and belief. She went on: "If Mr. Ellison wants it, why I
suppose it's all right. But you can't stay out later'n ten o'clock."

"I shan't go out at all of nights," said Susan eagerly.

"You _look_ quiet," said Mrs. Wylie, with the air of adding that
appearances were rarely other than deceptive.

"Oh, I _am_ quiet," declared Susan. It puzzled her, this
recurrence of the suggestion of noisiness.

"I can't allow much company--none in your room."

"There won't be any company." She blushed deeply. "That is, a--a
young man from our town--he may call once. But he'll be off for
the East right away."

Mrs. Wylie reflected on this, Susan the while standing uneasily,
dreading lest decision would be against her. Finally Mrs. Wylie said:

"Robert says you want the five-dollar room. I'll show it to you."

They ascended two flights through increasing shabbiness. On the
third floor at the rear was a room--a mere continuation of the
narrow hall, partitioned off. It contained a small folding bed,
a small table, a tiny bureau, a washstand hardly as large as
that in the cabin on the boat, a row of hooks with a curtain of
flowered chintz before them, a kitchen chair, a chromo of "Awake
and Asleep," a torn and dirty rag carpet. The odor of the room,
stale, damp, verging on moldy, seemed the fitting exhalation
from such an as