"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?"
Susan started nervously at that explosive exclamation. "I—I haven't got a trunk—only a few things in a shawl strap."