"Small. Not so large by one-third as the room where they are living now."
"Can't go and see it?"
"Yes, there is no difficulty about that. I will go with you to-morrow, if you like."
"And how much is the rent, Mr. Wharncliffe?"
"One dollar a week. The woman was willing to let the room to Mrs. Staples, because I was making the bargain and understood to be security for her; only so."
"Then we will go to-morrow, sir, shall we, and see the room and see what it wants? and perhaps you will shew me that place where you said I could get furniture cheap?"
This was agreed upon. To Matilda's very great surprise, David, when he heard her news, said he would go too. She half expected he would get over the notion by the time he got home from school on Monday; but no; he said he wanted a walk and he would see the place with her.
The place was humble enough. A poor little house, that looked as if its more aspiring neighbours would certainly swallow it up and deny its right to be at all; so low and decrepit it was, among better built if not handsome edifices. Street and surroundings were dingy and mean; however, when they went in they found a decent little room under the sloping roof and with a bit of blue sky visible from its dormer window. It was empty and bare.
"Thin, we always has rispictable lodgers," said the good woman, who had taken her arms out of a tub of soapsuds to accompany the party upstairs; "and the room is a very dacent apartment entirely; and warrm it is, and quite. An' we had a company o' childhren in one o' the houses adjinin', that bothered the life out o' me wid their hollerin' as soon as ever we histed the winders in the summer time; but the father he died, and the mother, she was a poor kind of a body that couldn't seem to get along any way at all at all; and I believe she thried, an she didn't succade, the poor craythur! An' she just faded away, like, and whin she couldn't stan' no longer, she was tuk away to the 'ospital; and the chillen was put in the poor-us, or I don't just know what it is they calls the place; and it was weary for them, but it was a good day for meself at the same time. An' the place is iligant and quite now, sir. An' whin will the lady move in, that you're wantin' the room for?"
"As soon as it can be ready for her, Mrs. Leary."