Mrs. Tibbets sighed, and nodded. "Yes, I'm afraid it does."
"Wonderful!" said the pale man. "I'll take it."
"You will?" she said, with considerable surprise.
"Yes. I'm—I'm a sort of nature-lover. We're all brothers, really. The cat, the bat, the rat, the spider, the maggot...."
"Well," said Mrs. Tibbets, with a sniff, "it'll be like Old Home Week for you in my cellar, then. It's this way," she said, leading him out into the kitchen.
She had to fumble with a ring of keys before she found the one that opened the stiff metal padlock on the cellar door. "Haven't been down here in months," she said with a little laugh, flicking on the lightswitch, and preceding him down the stairs. He followed wordlessly past the heaped cartons of odd bits of junk, past the furnace—unused during the summer months—and to a small room (really hardly more than a bin) at the rear of the cellar.
Mrs. Tibbets reddened in embarrassment as she opened the crooked door of plain, unsanded boards. "Used to be used for coal, before I had oil heat put in," she said, apologetically, hoping he wouldn't mind the crust of grime that covered the tiny cellar window near the top of the flaking brick wall. The place had a rather repulsive wet, yeasty smell to it.
Her new tenant, however, seemed very content. Almost ecstatic. "And what is this?" he said, indicating a short flight of stairs just outside the door of his room.
"Oh, that leads to the backyard," said Mrs. Tibbets. "Hasn't been unlocked in years," she said, indicating the slope of the sturdy cellar doors at the head of the stone stairway.