“Forget it, old man,” rolled out Tom’s bass. “Come on, let’s go up to Mrs. Arty’s.”
“But, gee! it’s nearly a quarter to eleven.”
“That’s all right. We can get up there by a little after, and Mrs. Arty stays up playing cards till after twelve.”
“Golly!” Mr. Wrenn agitatedly ejaculated under his breath, as they noisily entered Mrs. Arty’s—though not noisily on his part.
The parlor door was open. Mrs. Arty’s broad back was toward them, and she was announcing to James T. Duncan and Miss Proudfoot, with whom she was playing three-handed Five Hundred, “Well, I’ll just bid seven on hearts if you’re going to get so set up.” She glanced back, nodded, said, “Come in, children,” picked up the “widow,” and discarded with quick twitches of the cards. The frightened Mr. Wrenn, feeling like a shipwrecked land-lubber, compared this gaming smoking woman unfavorably with the intense respectability of his dear lost patron, Mrs. Zapp. He sat uneasy till the hand of cards was finished, feeling as though they were only tolerating him. And Nelly Croubel was nowhere in sight.
Suddenly said Mrs. Arty, “And now you would like to look at that room, Mr. Wrenn, unless I’m wrong.”
“Why—uh—yes, I guess I would like to.”
“Come with me, child,” she said, in pretended severity. “Tom, you take my hand in the game, and don’t let me hear you’ve been bidding ten on no suit without the joker.” She led Mr. Wrenn to the settee hat-rack in the hall. “The third-floor-back will be vacant in two weeks, Mr. Wrenn. We can go up and look at it now if you’d like to. The man who has it now works nights—he’s some kind of a head waiter at Rector’s, or something like that, and he’s out till three or four. Come.”
When he saw that third-floor-back, the room that the smart people at Mrs. Arty’s were really willing to let him have, he felt like a man just engaged. It was all in soft green—grass-green matting, pale-green walls, chairs of white wicker with green cushions; the bed, a couch with a denim cover and four sofa pillows. It gave him the impression of being a guest on Fifth Avenue.
“It’s kind of a plain room,” Mrs. Arty said, doubtfully. “The furniture is kind of plain. But my head-waiter man—it was furnished for a friend of his—he says he likes it better than any other room in the house. It is comfortable, and you get lots of sunlight and—”