“If you don’t mind, I don’t,” he said carelessly. “It won’t rent for much, though; but it will give you less to do,” with a rather anxious glance at the form and face of his wife. Indeed, Dora was not looking well; she had grown very thin, and her eyes looked pathetically large and blue in her white face. But she laughed off all anxiety; she might be a little pulled down by the warm weather, she said, but that was all.
The next day, a placard appeared in the shop window bearing, in the large, beautiful Italian hand Dora had learned in her German school, the words, “Room for Rent.” But a day or two passed before it attracted any attention. On Sunday afternoon Dora and Louis were sitting in the shop door, enjoying the cool evening air after a heavy thunder storm, when two passers-by stopped to consider the announcement, with an air that evidently meant business.
For a moment Dora’s heart failed her, then it swelled with sympathy, while baby Louis opened his blue eyes and stared with all his might. Anything quite so tall, and painfully, terribly thin as the elder of these two women, he had never seen in all his little life. When she turned to address Dora, a moment later, she showed a face with large, strongly marked features, whereupon an expression of hopeless patience sat but ill. Her companion was shorter, and of a thinness less painfully apparent; with a face from which all expression, even that of patience, seemed to have been crushed out. It was dull, blank, and hopeless; that was all. They were dressed in thin, shabby calico, bonnets, of which shabby would be too flattering a description, and faded plaid shawls, which they kept so closely drawn over their wasted bosoms that, considering the warmth of the evening, they must have served to cover further defects in their costume. Their voices, when they spoke, were low and weak, not so much from physical weakness—for there was no sign of any actual disease upon either—as with a weary consciousness that speaking louder would not better their condition.
“What rent do you ask for this room, ma’am?”
“We did wish to get one dollar a month,” replied Dora, in her pretty German-English.
The woman shook her head.
“I guess it’s worth it too,” she said; “but we ain’t got it to pay. Come, Susan.”
“Stop one minute,” cried Dora as they were about to move on; “how much do you wish to pay?”
“‘Taint wishin’, ma’am; it’s what we can do. We’ve been paying seventy-five cents a month, ever sence we come to town, Susan and me; but times is hard, and yesterday our landlady raised the rent on us, so we’ve got to quit.”
“I might let you have it for seventy-five,” said the young mother softly. Louis seemed to agree with her, for he had already struggled down from her lap, and was clinging triumphantly to Susan’s thin hand, which she had involuntarily put out to help him. Louis was not fond of sitting in laps, much preferring his own two sturdy legs as a means of support.