JESSAMY and Barbara were ready for their expedition in search of peace by nine o'clock the next morning. Phyllis had solemnly promised to prepare for herself and her aunt alternate cups of beef-tea and malted milk for every two hours of their absence, a task to which she protested she was quite equal, especially as she would be sustained by the remembrance of the errand on which they were bound. If they were detained over lunch-hour, the willing but overworked maid was engaged to serve them, a provision for possibilities suggested by Phyllis, who realized that Harlem was a long distance away and flat-seeking consuming of time.
"Phyllis is rather like the centurion in the gospel: she tells one to go, and she goeth, and another to do this, and she doeth it. That isn't irreverent, because the centurion was only a Roman soldier, not even a prophet," said Bab, as she and Jessamy toiled up the elevated-road steps at Thirty-third Street. "I wonder what it is about Phyl that we all yield to?"
"She is very decided, with all her quiet manner, for one thing," said Jessamy; "and we have learned that she is generally right, and pulls us out of difficulties for another. Wait till I get up, Bab; I think I've two tickets."
"What does it matter? Keep them; we shall need them when we've moved up town," said Bab, airily, as she dashed ahead and deposited ten cents at the ticket-seller's window.
They had a list of apartments to rent, cut from the paper, and they decided, after consulting it, to make One Hundred and Fourth Street what Bab called "their distributing-point," whence they would scatter themselves impartially over the neighborhood.
It is not wholly an attractive section of the city; Jessamy and Bab felt their ardor somewhat dampened after they had rung several janitors' bells, in uniformly small vestibules decorated with stencil-work on the ceilings and walls, and with little brass speaking-tubes, and electric bells, and, in many cases, with several small children munching cookies and staring, round-eyed, at the strangers. The apartments they were shown were not what they had dreamed of the previous night. They were tiny, with chambers "just about large enough to iron a pocket handkerchief on the floor," said Jessamy, forlornly.
But Barbara said, "Where there's scope there's hope, and New York is large," and kept on cheerfully. At last they discovered a house further up, but still below the bend of the elevated road, around which, the girls felt sure, they would never be able to persuade their mother to travel. It looked very neatly kept; the janitor's wife, a ruddy German, showed them the rooms, up two flights, with no elevator, it was true, but the stairs were not steep ones. There were seven rooms in the little place, not large, but not as small as the others they had seen; the outlook was on a quiet street, the chambers were not all dark and aired from a well, and the upper entrance to Central Park was but two blocks away. The rent of the apartment, they were told, was forty-five dollars a month; but, since it was February, the janitor thought it could be had for forty. Jessamy and Barbara were unversed in the ways of landlords, and did not know that this was a method frequently resorted to in trying to enhance the attractiveness of unrented property; it had its desired effect in their case, and they quite trembled lest some one else should secure their bargain before they had time to report it to their mother.
"We will go to see the landlord," said Jessamy, making a note of his address, and hoping she did not seem too eager.
They got home, tired but triumphant, to be greeted by two faces so much brighter than the ones they had left that they were amazed, until Mrs. Wyndham and Phyllis told them in a breath that Mrs. Van Alyn had come home, and had been to see them.