“I have been up town,” she answered, nervously.
“Hear of anything?”
Beatrice shook her head.
“Not yet. Please let me go upstairs and lie down. I am tired and I need to rest.”
“And I need my money,” Mrs. Selina P. Watkins declared, without quitting her position, “and it's no good your going up to your room because the door's locked.”
“What do you mean?” Beatrice faltered.
“I mean that I've done with you,” the lodging-house keeper announced. “Your room's locked up and the key's in my pocket, and the sooner you get out of this, the better I shall be pleased.”
“But my box—my clothes,” Beatrice cried.
“I'll keep 'em a week for you,” the woman answered. “Bring me the money by then and you shall have them. If I don't hear anything of you, they'll go to the auction mart.”
Something of her old spirit fired the girl for a moment. She was angry, and she forgot that her knees were trembling with fatigue, that she was weak and aching with hunger.