As my finances were very low, I determined to find a boarding-house instead of wasting them at a hotel. I accordingly stopped at a sizable house which I recognized as a boarding-house on a street in a neighborhood which might, from the old houses with their handsome doors and windows, have once been fashionable, though fashion had long since taken its flight to a newer and gaudier part of the town, and the mansions were now giving place to shops and small grocers' markets. A wide door with a fan-shaped transom gave it dignity. A large wistaria vine coiled up to the top of a somewhat dilapidated porch with classical pillars lent it distinction. The landlady, Mrs. Kale, a pleasant looking, kindly woman, offered me a small back-room on reasonable terms, it being, as she said, the dull season; and, having arranged for Dix in a dingy little livery stable near by, I took it "temporarily," till I could look around.
I found the company somewhat nondescript—ranging all the way from old ladies with false fronts and cracked voices to uppish young travelling men and their rather sad-looking wives.
Among the boarders, the two who interested me most were two elderly ladies, sisters, whose acquaintance I made the day after my arrival. They did not take their meals at the common table, but, as I understood, in their own apartment in the third story. They were a quaint and pathetic pair, very meagre, very shabby, and manifestly very poor. There was an air of mystery about them, and Mrs. Kale treated them with a respect which she paid to no others of her variegated household. They occasionally honored the sitting-room with their presence on Sunday evenings, by Mrs. Kale's especial invitation, and I was much diverted with them. They were known as the Miss Tippses; but Mrs. Kale always spoke of them as "Miss Pansy" and "Miss Pinky." It seems that she had known them in her youth, "back East."
My acquaintance with the two old ladies at this time was entirely accidental. The morning after my arrival, as I started out to look around for an office, and also to take Dix for a walk, as well as to take a look at the city, I fell in with two quaint-looking old women who slipped out of the door just ahead of me, one of them slightly lame, and each with a large bundle in her arms. They were dressed in rusty black, and each wore a veil, which quite concealed her features. But as they limped along, engaged in an animated conversation, their voices were so refined as to arrest my attention, and I was guilty of the impropriety of listening to them, partly out of sheer idleness, and partly because I wanted to know something of my boarding-house and of my fellow boarders. They were talking about a ball of the night before, an account of which they had read in the papers, or rather, as I learned, in a copy of a paper which they had borrowed, and they were as much interested in it as if they had been there themselves. "Oh, wouldn't you have liked to see it?" said one. "It must have been beautiful. I should have liked to see Miss ——" (I could not catch the name). "She must have been exquisite in chiffon and lace. She is so lovely anyhow. I did not know she had returned."
"I wonder Mr. —— did not tell us." Again I failed to hear the name.
"For a very good reason, I suppose. He did not know."
"He is dead in love with her."
"Oh, you are so romantic!" said the other, whom I took from her figure and her feebleness to be the elder of the two.
"No; but any one can tell that at a glance."
"What a pity he could not marry her. Then we should be sure to see her as a bride."