It was just what I intended telling her, but when I saw her consternation I weakened.
“It is a little chilly this evening,” I faltered, “but perhaps—”
Mrs. Bushey cut me short by falling into the Morris chair as one become limp from an unexpected blow.
“What am I to do?” she wailed, looking up at the chandelier as though she expected an answer to drop on her from the globes. “I’ve just got four tons of the best coal and a new furnace man. I pay him double what any one else on the block pays—double—and here you are cold.”
I felt as if I was doing Mrs. Bushey a personal wrong—insulting her as a landlady and a woman—and exclaimed earnestly, quite forgetting the night Roger and I had frozen in concert.
“Only this evening, Mrs. Bushey, I assure you.”
But she was too perturbed to listen:
“And I try so hard—I don’t make a cent and don’t expect to. I want you all to be comfortable, no matter how far behind I get. That’s my way—but I’ve always been a fool. Oh, dear!” She let her troubled gaze wander over the room— “Isn’t that a beautiful mirror? It came from the Trianon, belonged to Marie Antoinette. I took it out of my room and put it in here for you. What shall I do with that furnace man?”
I found myself telling her that an arctic temperature was exactly to my taste, and making a mental resolution that next time Roger came he could keep on his overcoat, and after all, spring was only six months off.
“No,” said Mrs. Bushey firmly, “I’ll have it right if I go to the poorhouse, and that’s where I’m headed. I had a carpenter’s bill to-day—twenty-six dollars and fourteen cents—and I’ve only eleven in the bank. It was for your floor”—she looked over it—“I really didn’t need to have it fixed, it’s not customary, but I was determined I’d give you a good floor no matter what it cost.”