On my making a full confession her interest was aroused. When she was convinced that Alice and I purposed to live on our earnings she turned her catalogue of rooms over to me. Selecting twenty of what appeared to me to be the most desirable addresses I set out.
It was after three o’clock when the door at the last address on my list closed behind me. The cheapest room I had seen was three dollars and a half a week. Its only window opened on a shaft and there was no heat of any sort. In an effort to bolster up my flagging spirits I became defiantly independent.
Why confine myself to the Y. W. C. A. list? I had passed a number of attractive-looking houses with the sign “furnished rooms” out. Why not investigate them? Alice and I were both old enough, had sufficient experience and judgment, to see if anything was amiss.
Just off one of the most beautiful squares in New York I came upon an unusually attractive-looking house with a furnished-room sign out. Even the sign itself was neater and more cheerful-appearing than any that had previously attracted my attention. The door was opened by the landlady. It was a charming room—on the second floor with a huge bay window—that overlooked a well-kept back yard. The bathroom was on the same floor, and in a little private hall just outside the door of the room there was a gas-stove with two burners.
On learning that the rent was three dollars the week, including gas for cooking, I opened my pocketbook to pay a week advance.
“Emily.”
Quickly turning toward the door from which direction the call appeared to come, I as quickly remembered that my mother had been in her grave more than fourteen years. Without thought, moved entirely by instinct, I slipped by the woman and out of the room. Halting on the stairs between her and the door I explained that it seemed to me wiser to consult Alice before definitely deciding.
Out on the streets my cheeks tingled with shame. Was I a fool or a coward or both? There had been nothing suspicious about the woman and certainly her house was more attractive than any on the Y. W. list. Out there in the sunlight it seemed the height of absurdity to imagine that my mother had spoken to me. Deciding to telephone Alice and ask her to meet me at the house on her way from work I turned toward Third Avenue to look for the nearest drug-store.
Discovering that I was almost under the eaves of a home for deaconesses, it occurred to me that they might have a list of decent rooming-houses in that neighborhood. At any rate, I reasoned, they would certainly be in a position to reassure me about the house I had just left.
While the little deaconess who opened the door was going over her list of rooms looking for a vacancy, I mentioned having called at a house on that block, giving the number.