“Do you think so?” She gave me a sidelong, speculative look.
“What nationality are you?” I asked.
“I’m Welsh,” she replied.
“I didn’t think you were English exactly. Your tone is softer.”
The taxi stopped abruptly and we got out. It was a shabby-looking building with a tea- or coffee-room on the ground floor, divided into small rooms separated by thin, cheap, wooden partitions. The woman who came to change me a half sovereign in order that I might pay the driver, was French, small and cleanly looking. She was pleasant and brisk and her whole attitude reassured me at once. She did not look like a person who would conspire to rob, and I had good reason to think more clearly of this as we came out later.
“This way,” said my street girl, “we go up here.”
And I followed her up two flights of thinly carpeted stairs into a small dingy room. It was clean, after the French fashion.
“It’s not so bad?” she asked with a touch of pride.
“No. Not at all.”
“Will you pay for the room, please?”