"If you want two rooms, Miss, and full board, I could accommodate you downstairs. The price is according, of course—a week in advance, and pay by the week."
Alex followed the woman downstairs again. She was sure that this was not the kind of place where she wanted to live.
Mrs. Hoxton showed her into a larger bedroom on the first floor, just opening the door and giving Alex a glimpse of extreme untidiness and an unmade bed.
"My gentleman got up late today—he don't go to 'is job Saturdays, so I 'aven't put the room to rights yet. But it's a nice room, Miss, and will be vacant on Monday. It goes with the downstairs sitting-room in the front, as a rule, but that's 'ad to be turned into a bedroom just lately. I've been so crowded."
"Will that be empty on Monday, too?" asked Alex, for the sake of answering something.
"Tonight, Miss. I let a coloured gentleman 'ave it—a student, you know; a thing I've never done before, either. Other people don't like it, and it gives a name, like, for not being particular who one takes. So he's going, and I shan't be sorry. I don't 'old with making talk, and it isn't as though the room wouldn't let easy. It's a beautiful room, Miss."
The coloured gentleman's room was tidier than the one upstairs, but a haze of stale tobacco fumes hung round it and obscured Alex' view of a short leather sofa with horsehair breaking from it in patches, a small round table in the middle of the room, and a tightly-closed window looking on to the traffic of Malden Road.
"About terms, Miss," Mrs. Hoxton began suggestively in the passage.
"Oh, I couldn't afford much," Alex began, thinking that it was more difficult than she had supposed to walk out again saying that she did not, after all, want the rooms.
"I'd let you 'ave those two rooms, and full board, for two-ten a week!" cried the landlady.