"Only five months.My husband died a year ago.I had to give up our little business six months after his death.Such a nice little stationery store, but I couldn't seem to refuse credit or to collect bills.Then I came here.This looks like losing, too.But I'm sure I'll come out all right.The Lord will provide, as the Good Book says.I don't have no trouble keeping the house full.Only they don't seem to pay.You want to see your room?"She and Susan ascended three flights to the top story--to a closet of a room at the back.The walls were newly and brightly papered.The sloping roof of the house made one wall a ceiling also, and in this two small windows were set.The furniture was a tiny bed, white and clean as to its linen, a table, two chairs, a small washstand with a little bowl and a less pitcher, a soap dish and a mug.Along one wall ran a row of hooks.On the floor was an old and incredibly dirty carpet, mitigated by a strip of clean matting which ran from the door, between washstand and bed, to one of the windows.
Susan glanced round--a glance was enough to enable her to see all--all that was there, all that the things there implied.
Back to the tenement life! She shuddered.
"It ain't much," said Mrs.Tucker."But usually rooms like these rents for five a week."The sun had heated the roof scorching hot; the air of this room, immediately underneath, was like that of a cellar where a furnace is in full blast.But Susan knew she was indeed in luck."It's clean and nice here," said she to Mrs.Tucker, "and I'm much obliged to you for being so reasonable with me."And to clinch the bargain she then and there paid half a month's rent."I'll give you the rest when my week at the store's up.""No hurry," said Mrs.Tucker who was handling the money and looking at it with glistening grateful eyes."Us poor folks oughtn't to be hard on each other--though, Lord knows, if we was, I reckon we'd not be quite so poor.It's them that has the streak of hard in 'em what gets on.But the Bible teaches us that's what to expect in a world of sin.I suppose you want to go now and have your trunk sent?""This is all I've got," said Susan, indicating her bag on the table.
Into Mrs.Tucker's face came a look of terror that made Susan realize in an instant how hard-pressed she must be.It was the kind of look that comes into the eyes of the deer brought down by the dogs when it sees the hunter coming up.
"But I've a good place," Susan hastened to say."I get ten a week.
And as I told you before, when I can't pay I'll go right away.""I've lost so much in bad debts," explained the landlady humbly."I don't seem to see which way to turn." Then she brightened."It'll all come out for the best.I work hard and I try to do right by everybody.""I'm sure it will," said Susan believingly.
Often her confidence in the moral ideals trained into her from childhood had been sorely tried.But never had she permitted herself more than a hasty, ashamed doubt that the only way to get on was to work and to practice the Golden Rule.Everyone who was prosperous attributed his prosperity to the steadfast following of that way; as for those who were not prosperous, they were either lazy or bad-hearted, or would have been even worse off had they been less faithful to the creed that was best policy as well as best for peace of mind and heart.
In trying to be as inexpensive to Spenser as she could contrive, and also because of her passion for improving herself, Susan had explored far into the almost unknown art of living, on its shamefully neglected material side.She had cultivated the habit of spending much time about her purchases of every kind--had spent time intelligently in saving money intelligently.She had gone from shop to shop, comparing values and prices.She had studied quality in food and in clothing, and thus she had discovered what enormous sums are wasted through ignorance--wasted by poor even more lavishly than by rich or well-to-do, because the shops where the poor dealt had absolutely no check on their rapacity through the occasional canny customer.She had learned the fundamental truth of the material art of living; only when a good thing happens to be cheap is a cheap thing good.Spenser, cross-examining her as to how she passed the days, found out about this education she was acquiring.It amused him."Awaste of time!" he used to say."Pay what they ask, and don't bother your head with such petty matters." He might have suspected and accused her of being stingy had not her generosity been about the most obvious and incessant trait of her character.
