How many restaurants and saloons! Why, everybody must be eating and drinking all the time.And at each corner she looked up and down the cross streets, and there were more and ever more magnificent buildings, throngs upon throngs of people.Was there no end to it? This was Sixth Street, still Sixth Street, as she saw at the corner lamp-posts.Then there must be five more such streets between this and the river; and she could see, up the cross streets, that the city was even vaster in the direction of the hills.And there were all these cross streets! It was stupefying--overwhelming--incredible.
She began to be nervous, they were going so far.She glanced anxiously at the conductor.He was watching her interestedly, understood her glance, answered it with a reassuring nod.He called out:
"I'm looking out for you, miss.I've got you on my mind.Don't you fret."She gave him a bright smile of relief.They were passing through a double row of what seemed to her stately residences, and there were few people on the sidewalks.The air, too, was clearer, though the walls were grimy and also the grass in the occasional tiny front yards.But the curtains at the windows looked clean and fresh, and so did the better class of people among those on the sidewalk.It delighted her to see so many well-dressed women, wearing their clothes with an air which she told herself she must acquire.She was startled by the conductor's calling out:
"Now, miss!"
She rose as he rang the bell and was ready to get off when the car stopped, for she was eager to cause him as little trouble as possible.
"The house is right straight before you," said the conductor.
"The number's in the transom."
She thanked him, descended, was on the sidewalk before Mrs.
Wylie's.She looked at the house and her heart sank.She thought of the small sum in her purse; it was most unlikely that such a house as this would harbor her.For here was a grand stone stairway ascending to a deep stone portico, and within it great doors, bigger than those of the Wright mansion, the palace of Sutherland.However, she recalled the humble appearance and mode of speech of her friend the drug clerk and plucked up the courage to ascend and to ring.
A slattern, colored maid opened the door.At the first glance within, at the first whiff of the interior air, Susan felt more at ease.For she was seeing what even her bedazzled eyes recognized as cheap dowdiness, and the smell that assailed her nostrils was that of a house badly and poorly kept--the smell of cheap food and bad butter cooking, of cats, of undusted rooms, of various unrecognizable kinds of staleness.She stood in the center of the big dingy parlor, gazing round at the grimed chromos until Mrs.Wylie entered--a thin middle-aged woman with small brown 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 Isuppose 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 assemblage of forbidding objects.
"It's a nice, comfortable room," said Mrs.Wylie aggressively.
"I couldn't afford to give it and two meals for five dollars except till the first of September.After that it's eight.""I'll be glad to stay, if you'll let me," said Susan.Mrs.
Wylie's suspicion, so plain in those repellent eyes, took all the courage out of her.The great adventure seemed rapidly to be losing its charms.She could not think of herself as content or anything but sad and depressed in such surroundings as these.
How much better it would be if she could live out in the open, out where it was attractive!
"I suppose you've got some baggage," said Mrs.Wylie, as if she rather expected to hear that she had not.
"I left it at the drug store," explained Susan.
"Your trunk?"
