"You'll do nothing of the sort, my dear woman," said Joan. "I like running up and down stairs. It does me good. Besides, I'd rather be at the back. There's a tree, or something that once tried hard to be a tree, to look at, as I know well, for the room used to be mine; so there's no use talking any more about that matter--it's settled. You stay where you are, and I will rise, like cream, to the top. Now tell me about this doubtful person you are afraid won't pay. Is it a man or a woman?"
"A woman," replied Miss Witt, "and one of the strangest beings I ever saw. It is a great comfort to me that you are here, miss, for you can decide what is to be done about her. She hasn't paid her board for a fortnight, but she keeps pleading that as soon as she is well, and can go out, she will get remittances which have been delayed."
"Oh, she is ill, then?"
"So she says. But I'm not sure, miss, it isn't just an excuse to work upon my compassion, for why should she have to go out for remittances? She stops in her room, lying upon a sofa, and makes a deal of bother with her meals being carried up so many pairs of stairs, though it's hardly worth while her having them at all, she eats so little. Yet she doesn't look a bit different from what she did when she was supposed to be well and going about as much like anybody else as one of her sort could ever do."
"What do you mean?" asked Joan, whose curiosity was fired.
"Only that she is, and was, more a ghost than a human being, with her great, hollow, black eyes, like burning coals, set deep under her thick eyebrows and overhanging forehead; with her thin cheeks--why, miss, they almost meet in the middle--her yellow-white skin, her tall, gliding figure and stealthy way of walking, so that you never hear a sound till she's at your back."
"Queer kind of boarder," commented Joan.
"That she is, miss; and when she applied for a room, I would have said we were full up, but in those days we had several of our best rooms empty, and, strange as she was, her clothes were so good, and the luggage on the four-wheeler waiting outside was so promising, as you might say, that it did seem a pity to send away two guineas a week because Providence had given it a scarecrow face. So I showed her the best back room on the top floor----"
"Next to mine," cut in Joan.
"If you will have it so, miss; and there she's been for the last six weeks, not having paid a penny since the end of the first month."