Mrs. Parker's parlours.

Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the
second-floor-back at $8. Convinced by her second-floor manner that it
was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left
to take charge of his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm
Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double
front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted
something still cheaper.

If you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were taken to look at Mr.
Skidder's large hall room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder's room was not
vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But
every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins.
After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible
eviction, would pay something on his rent.

Then--oh, then--if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand
clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely
proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs.
Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word "Clara," she
would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured
maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth
flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7x8 feet of floor
space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber
closet or storeroom.

In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser.
Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a
coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as
from a well--and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little
skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.

"Two dollars, suh," Clara would say in her half-contemptuous,
half-Tuskegeenial tones.

One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter
made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little
girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped
and that always looked as if they were saying: "Goodness me! Why didn't
you keep up with us?"

Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlours. "In this closet," she said,
"one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal--"

"But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist," said Miss Leeson, with a
shiver.

Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that
she kept for those who fail