"Twenty dollars a week for each, two in a room," replied the gaunt person.
"Thank you; they would not answer," said Jessamy. "Why, I should die here, or go mad of odors and ugliness," she added for Phyllis's private ear.
"We might consider thirty-five a week, as it is one family," suggested the gaunt person at the door.
"No, thanks," said Phyllis. "Only fancy! Seven dollars more than we mean to pay, and for what? Are all boarding-houses like this, Ruth?"
"Not in detail; similar in genus. I tell you, you would be far better off in your own little flat, cooking your own little meals on your own little gas-range, in your own little spider. However, don't lose heart at the first one; there are degrees of badness," laughed Ruth.
The second attempt was made further up town, in a street among the Thirties. The parlor into which the girls were ushered was more cheerful here than in the first case, but was furnished in a style that jarred on the nerves through the eyes, just as grating slate-pencils jar them through the ears.
A portly person, with a much jetted front, sailed into the room, smiling affably.
"We take a few guests," she said in reply to the inquiry for board, precisely as the gaunt person down town had replied, adding, like her, that she "preferred gentlemen." "I have the back parlor on this floor and a hall bedroom on the third vacant just now, though we rarely have a vacancy," she said graciously. "You might manage with a folding-bed in the large room and the hall bedroom."
"And your prices?" asked Phyllis. "Still, it doesn't matter; we must have two square rooms near each other."