"How much does she pay?" said Mildred.
"Your room won't be quite as nice as hers. I put you at the top because you can sing up there, part of the mornings and part of the afternoons, without disturbing anybody. I don't have a general table any more. You can take your meals in your room or at the restaurant in the apartment-house next door. It's good and quite reasonable."
"How much for the room?" persisted Mildred, laughing.
"Seven dollars a week, and the use of the bath."
Mildred finally wrung from her that the right price was twelve dollars a week, and insisted on paying that—"until my money gets low."
"Don't worry about that," said Mrs. Belloc.
"You mustn't weaken me," cried Mildred. "You mustn't encourage me to be a coward and to shirk. That's why I'm coming here."
"I understand," said Mrs. Belloc. "I've got the New England streak of hardness in me, though I believe that masseuse has almost ironed it out of my face. Do I look like a New England schoolmarm?"
Mildred could truthfully answer that there wasn't a trace of it.
When she returned to Mrs. Brindley's—already she had ceased to think of it as home—she announced her new plans. Mrs. Brindley said nothing, but Mildred understood the quick tightening of the lines round her mouth and the shifting of the eyes. She hastened to explain that Mrs. Belloc was no longer the sort of woman or the sort of landlady she had been a few months before. Mrs. Brindley of the older New York, could neither understand nor believe in the people of the new and real New York whom it molds for better or for worse so rapidly—and even remolds again and again. But Mildred was able to satisfy her that the house was at least not suspicious.