"Well, now, it doesn't LOOK queer, if that's what you mean," replied he. "You'll do very nicely there. You can be just as quiet as you want."
She saw that hotel New York would not believe her respectable. So to the Ripon she went, and was admitted without discussion. As the last respectable clerk had said, it did not LOOK queer. But it FELT queer; she resolved that she would go into a boarding-house the very next day.
Here again what seemed simple proved difficult. No respectable boarding-house would have Miss Mary Stevens. She was confident that nothing in her dress or manner hinted mystery. Yet those sharp-eyed landladies seemed to know at once that there was something peculiar about her. Most of them became rude the instant they set eyes upon her. A few—of the obviously less prosperous class—talked with her, seemed to be listening for something which her failing to say decided them upon all but ordering her out of the house. She, hindered by her innocence, was slow in realizing that she could not hope for admission to any select respectable circle, even of high-class salesladies and clerks, unless she gave a free and clear account of herself—whence she had come, what she was doing, how she got her money.
Toward the end of the second day's wearisome and humiliating search she found a house that would admit her. It was a pretentious, well-furnished big house in Madison Avenue. The price—thirty-five dollars a week for board, a bedroom with a folding bed in an alcove, and a bath, was more than double what she had counted on paying, but she discovered that decent and clean lodgings and food fit to eat were not to be had for less. "And I simply can't live pig-fashion," said she. "I'd be so depressed that I could do nothing. I can't live like a wild animal, and I won't." She had some vague notion—foreboding—that this was not the proper spirit with which to face life. "I suppose I'm horribly foolish," reflected she, "but if I must go down, I'll go down with my colors flying." She did not know precisely what that phrase meant, but it sounded fine and brave and heartened her to take the expensive lodgings.
The landlady was a Mrs. Belloc. Mildred had not talked with her twenty minutes before she had a feeling that this name was assumed. The evening of her first day in the house she learned that her guess was correct—learned it from the landlady herself. After dinner Mrs. Belloc came into her room to cheer her up, to find out about her and to tell her about herself.
"Now that you've come," said she, "the house is full up—except some little rooms at the top that I'd as lief not fill. The probabilities are that any ladies who would take them wouldn't be refined enough to suit those I have. There are six, not counting me, every one with a bath and two with private parlors. And as they're all handsome, sensible women, ladylike and steady, I think the prospects are that they'll pay promptly and that I won't have any trouble."
Mildred reflected upon this curious statement. It sounded innocent enough, yet what a peculiar way to put a simple fact.
"Of course it's none of my business how people live as long as they keep up the respectabilities," pursued Mrs. Belloc. "It don't do to inquire into people in New York. Most of 'em come here because they want to live as they please."
"No doubt," said Mildred a little nervously, for she suspected her landlady of hitting at her, and wondered if she had come to cross-examine her and, if the results were not satisfactory, to put her into the street.
"I know I came for that reason," pursued Mrs. Belloc. "I was a school-teacher up in New England until about two years ago. Did you ever teach school?"