Carrie remembered this with a start. Where to get the money? She had none laid up for such an emergency. Rent day was drawing near.
“I’ll not do it,” she said, remembering her necessity. “I don’t use the flat. I’m not going to give up my money this time. I’ll move.”
Fitting into this came another appeal from Miss Osborne, more urgent than ever.
“Come live with me, won’t you?” she pleaded. “We can have the loveliest room. It won’t cost you hardly anything that way.”
“I’d like to,” said Carrie, frankly.
“Oh, do,” said Lola. “We’ll have such a good time.”
Carrie thought a while.
“I believe I will,” she said, and then added: “I’ll have to see first, though.”
With the idea thus grounded, rent day approaching, and clothes calling for instant purchase, she soon found excuse in Hurstwood’s lassitude. He said less and drooped more than ever.
As rent day approached, an idea grew in him. It was fostered by the demands of creditors and the impossibility of holding up many more. Twenty-eight dollars was too much for rent. “It’s hard on her,” he thought. “We could get a cheaper place.”