"The lady who came in a while ago; she wore a light duster."
"Oh, Miss Morissey—ye want to see her, do ye?"
"That's it, Miss Morissey—please."
"She wouldn't hear if I called. She's on the third," she answered, with a sigh and a look of reproach. "Ye can sit down there—" She took a step but turned with a sudden solicitude. "Don't bear too hard."
Mindful of the caution Bofinger balanced gingerly on the shaky chair, watching the landlady laboring up the stairs, a step at a time, childish fashion.
An air of dinginess and neglect pervaded the hall and the distant dining-room. In the carpets were frayed shallows, on the banisters two spindles diverged from the line. The blistered plaster was dropping from the ceiling, while on the wall the grimy, green paper had regions of musky yellow. Curtains and shutters rigidly excluded the daylight, while everywhere the carpeted silence spread the feeling of a cemetery of abandoned hopes.
From the second floor the thin complaint of the landlady came down.
"Miss Morissey! oh, Miss Morissey!"
So persuaded was Bofinger by the all prevailing famine that he rose and cautiously regained his hat from the loose rack. The landlady, climbing on, kept calling from time to time, fruitlessly, "Miss Morissey! Miss Morissey!"
A door whined, and in the dusk of the landing above a vague head came to peer down at the lawyer. The landlady returned, descending with the same efforts, and announced: