The place seemed to them the very ideal of a studio. It was a dark old room on the south side of the Square, thoroughly dirty and almost past cleaning. There were plenty of mice and other more intolerable vermin, and a musty smell that no airing could banish. But, to compensate, more than to compensate, was the View, the Outlook, the sight of scrawny little Washington Square Park and a glimpse up Fifth Avenue through the Arch. Every visitor they ever had later on admired this view.
It had just the right sort of furnishings, too, left intact by the two former girl artists who were subletting it. Big wicker chairs and little feeble tables, a rug, small, dingy and expensive, a screen, a battered and stained drawing table, candles with “quaint” shades striped purple and yellow. And pieces of hammered brass which should have gleamed from corners but which did not gleam because they were too dirty and the corners were so very dark that nothing within them was visible. The place had altogether an aimless air, a look of being one part work room and three parts play room; it was frivolous in a solemn, pretentious sort of way, neither pretty nor convenient.
But to Rosaleen an enchanted spot, something which seemed to her more like home, dearer to her than any other place in the world. She loved it!
“I’d like to help,” she said. “What shall I do first?”
“The back room,” said Enid. “Otherwise we’ll never get to bed to-night.”
Rosaleen lifted the curtain and went into the back room where they were all to sleep and to do their cooking. A forlorn place, overrun with roaches, and containing two cots, a filthy gas stove, an old sink red with rust, and a dreadful mouldy little thing that had once been an ice-box. There was no window, no light except the gas high overhead. It was depressing, hideous, highly unwholesome, with an air of abandoned domesticity terribly distressing to Rosaleen. She couldn’t endure the thought of food being prepared and cooked in that dark and dirty place. But the others didn’t care at all.
They had got themselves some sort of lunch there before Rosaleen’s arrival; the greasy plates still stood by the sink.
“I’ll make you some tea,” she said, pitying their grimy and back-breaking labour.
She scrubbed out a rusty little kettle and set it on to boil; then she began to wash the dishes and to clean the cluttered, dusty shelf and to set out on it the provisions lying about in bags and boxes. She opened the little ice-box, devoid of ice and smelling most vilely, and saw in there a loaf of bread and an opened tin of milk.
“I wouldn’t use that ice-box if I were you!” she called out, anxiously. “It doesn’t seem—nice.”