“Yes. How do you like it?”
“I don’t see any wash-stand, or any chance to wash.”
“Come, that’s rich!” said Mr. Tucker, appearing to be very much amused. “You didn’t think you was stoppin’ in the Fifth Avenoo Hotel, did you?”
“This don’t look like it.”
“We ain’t used to fashionable boarders, and we don’t know how to take care of ’em. You’ll have to go downstairs and wash in the trough, like the rest of the paupers do.”
“And wipe my face on the grass, I suppose?” said Philip coolly, though his heart sank within him at the thought of staying even one night in a place so squalid and filthy.
“Come, that’s goin’ too far,” said Mr. Tucker, who felt that the reputation of the boarding-house was endangered by such insinuations. “We mean to live respectable. There’s two towels a week allowed, and that I consider liberal.”
“And do all your boarders use the same towel?” asked Phil, unable to suppress an expression of disgust.
“Sartain. You don’t think we allow ’em one apiece, do you!”
“No, I don’t,” said Philip decidedly.