"Come in," she says, "and get warm."
I walk into a front parlour with furniture that evidently serves domestic as well as social purposes. There is a profusion of white knitted tidies and portieres that exude an odour of cooking. Before the fire a workingman sits in a blue shirt and overalls. Fresh from the barber's hands, he has a clean mask marked by the razor's edge. Already I feel at home.
"Want board, do you?" the woman asks. "Well, we ain't got no place; we're always right full up."
My disappointment is keen. Regretfully I leave the fire and start on again.
"I guess you'll have some trouble in finding what you want," the woman calls to me on her way back to the kitchen, as I go out.
The answer is everywhere the same, with slight variations. Some take "mealers" only, some only "roomers," some "only gentlemen." I begin to understand it. Among the thousands of families who live in the city on account of the work provided by the mills, there are girls enough to fill the factories. There is no influx such as creates in a small town the necessity for working-girl boarding-houses. There is an ample supply of hands from the existing homes. There is the same difference between city and
country factory life that there is between university life in a capital and in a country town.
A sign on a neat-looking corner house attracts me. I rap and continue to rap; the door is opened at length by a tall good-looking young woman. Her hair curls prettily, catching the light; her eyes are stupid and beautiful. She has on a black skirt and a bright purple waist.
"Do you take boarders?"
"Why, yes. I don't generally like to take ladies, they give so much trouble. You can come in if you like. Here's the room," she continues, opening a door near the vestibule. She brushes her hand over her forehead and stares at me; and then, as though she can no longer silence the knell that is ringing in her heart, she says to me, always staring: