“Then you have begun to make inquiries,” said Lucy.
“Ay,” answered Tom, rather bitterly, “and I don’t know when I shall leave off or where I shall find myself. I mustn’t go one bit further from the office than Mrs. Mott’s house is. Indeed, that’s rather too far, except that I was there from the first, and knew when I was comfortable. I’ve spoilt two Saturday afternoons going round and asking questions at every house where I saw ‘Furnished Apartments.’ And oh, Mrs. Challoner!”—Tom broke off with an indescribably comic expression of dismay on his good-humoured face.
“Did you have some funny experiences?” Lucy questioned.
“Didn’t I?” echoed Tom. “The very first place to which I went was in a good street not very far from the office, and the house looked nice on the outside. The door was opened by such a girl!—I don’t know whether she belonged to the family, or was a servant—I should think the former. But she might have been a Fuzzy Wuzzy straight from the Soudan by the look of her hair. It stood straight up all round her head. You couldn’t believe it unless you saw it! And her gown might have been made of dirty dishcloths. The passage looked like a black cavern. I didn’t want to go in, but I didn’t know how to get away. So I asked some questions. I said I wanted a bedroom-sitting-room, and the use of a parlour for meals. She said, ‘There wasn’t no parlour; their gentlemen mostly took their meals out.’ That gave me excuse to say it wouldn’t suit, and I got away.”
“Surely that must be a very extravagant arrangement for the gentlemen,” said Lucy.
“Mustn’t it?” rejoined Tom. “I should be stone-broke in a month! But I found that was the cry at all of them. The best—the most decent-looking—would give you your breakfast and ‘something at night, if you wanted it.’ That last was quite a concession. But they all turned up their noses at the thought of dinners! ‘There were plenty of restaurants,’ they said, ‘and they were cheap enough.’
“And the rooms!” continued Tom, with his disgusted voice. “Those which I could have for my price were always at the back, with a brick wall within an arm’s length from the window. And, ugh! there was a feeling about them as if one could smell and taste all the fellows who had ever used them! Lots of the bedrooms had nailed-down carpets, whose very pattern had disappeared. And the curtains and chair-covers looked as if they had not been washed since they were made.”
“I daresay they were not washable,” explained Lucy. “Cretonnes have replaced dimities and chintz, and none but the very best cretonnes will bear washing. This is so much the case that I hear the trade of the ‘calenderer’ who used to make chintz as good as new, has gone almost out of existence.”
“Most of them told me that all my washing would be ‘put out,’ and I should get my own bill from the laundry,” said Tom, who seemed considerably puzzled by all these domestic ins and outs, but not without some sound conviction that they tended neither to his comfort nor his prosperity.
“I did not find one house where they were willing to give me dinner daily,” Tom went on, “except boarding houses with a lot of people in them. I don’t like the idea of those at all. It is very tiring and worrying to sit down every evening at a dining-table packed with strangers, most of whom will be replaced in a week or two by another set of strangers. And the very lowest fee of these, for a top back room, so small, and with a roof so sloping, that I could not use my Indian clubs without upsetting the furniture, is as much as I gave Mrs. Mott for all my peace and comfort—and then it doesn’t include the washing! Yet I expect I’ll have to come to this,” added Tom ruefully.