I was just about suggesting that the carpenter’s bill be added to my next month’s rent when she brightened up and said an Italian count had taken the front room on the floor above.
“Count Mario Delcati, one of the very finest families of Milan. A charming young fellow, charming, with those gallant foreign manners. He’s coming here to learn business, American methods. I’m asking him nothing—a young man in a strange country. How could I? And though his family’s wealthy they’re giving him a mere pittance to live on. Of course I won’t make anything by it, I don’t expect to. His room’s got hardly any chairs in it, and I can’t buy any new ones with that carpenter’s bill hanging over me.” She smoothed the arm of the Morris chair and then looked at the floor. “It’s really made your floor look like parquet.”
I agreed, though I hadn’t thought of it before.
“You have a good many chairs in this room,” she went on, “more than usually go in a furnished apartment, even in the most expensive hotels.”
I had two chairs and a sofa. Mrs. Bushey rose and drew together her fur-lined coat.
“It’s horrible to think of that boy with only one chair,” she murmured, “far from his home, too. Of course I’d give him any I had, but mine are all gone. I’d give the teeth out of my head if anybody wanted them. It’s not in my nature to keep things for myself when other people ought to have them.”
I gave up the Morris chair. Mrs. Bushey was gushingly grateful.
“I’ll tell him it was yours and how willingly you gave it up,” she said, moving toward the door. Then she stopped suddenly and looked at the center-table lamp. “He’s a great reader, he tells me—French fiction. He ought to have a lamp and there’s not one to spare in either house.”
She looked encouragingly at me. I wanted the lamp.
“Can’t he read by the gas?” I pleaded.