“Oh yus,” she answered shortly, my appearance possibly not approximating the standard of affluence required by her house.
I said no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint of sickly tea in silence. Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to pay my reckoning (fourpence), when I pulled all of ten shillings out of my pocket. The expected result was produced.
“Yus, sir,” she at once volunteered; “I ’ave nice lodgin’s you’d likely tyke a fancy to. Back from a voyage, sir?”
“How much for a room?” I inquired, ignoring her curiosity.
She looked me up and down with frank surprise. “I don’t let rooms, not to my reg’lar lodgers, much less casuals.”
“Then I’ll have to look along a bit,” I said, with marked disappointment.
But the sight of my ten shillings had made her keen. “I can let you have a nice bed in with two hother men,” she urged. “Good, respectable men, an’ steady.”
“But I don’t want to sleep with two other men,” I objected.
“You don’t ’ave to. There’s three beds in the room, an’ hit’s not a very small room.”
“How much?” I demanded.