I wander forth and a child directs me to a six-room cottage, "a real bo'din'-house." I attack it and thus discover the dwelling where I make my home in Excelsior.
From the front room of this dwelling a kitchen opens. Within its shadow I see a Negro washing dishes. A tall woman, taller than most men, angular, white-haired, her face seared by toil and
stricken with age, greets me: she is the landlady. At her skirts, catching them and staring at a stranger, wanders a very young child—a blue-eyed, clean little being; a great relief, in point of fact, to the general filth hitherto presented me. The room beyond me is clean. I draw a breath of gratitude.
"Mrs. Jones?"
"Yes, this is Jones' bo'din'-house."
The old woman has a comb in her hand; she has "jest ben com'in' Letty's hair." Letty smiles delightedly.
"This yere's the child of the lady upstairs. The mother's a pore sick thing." Mrs. Jones bends the stiffness of sixty-eight years over the stranger's child. "And grandmaw keeps Letty clean, don't she, Letty? She don't never whip her, neither; jest a little cross to her."
"Can I find lodging here?"
She looks at me. "Yes, ma'am, you kin. I'm full up; got a lot of gentlemen bo'ders, but not many ladies. I got one bed up aloft; you can't have it alone neither, and the baby's mother is sick up there, too. Nuthin' ketchin'. She come here a stranger; the mill was too hard on her; she's ben sick fo' days."
I had made a quick decision and accepted half a bed. I would return at noon.