It was eleven in the morning, but the smell of coffee was in the dark basement corridor, and laughing voices were heard behind the shut door to the right. A man’s voice said in a stimulated tone:
“Believe me, and I’ve been around, Miss Claes is the deepest-dyed sport I’ve ever met. You could drag her the length of Harrow Street and she’d come up fresh from the laundry——”
“That reminds me, I’m going to start a laundry,” a woman’s voice announced.
“I’m going to start something myself——” came another voice.
The girl, following through the corridor, heard a little breathless sort of chuckle from the woman ahead of her on the dark stairs. The place smelled like a shut room when it rains—a cigaretty admixture.
They climbed. The next hall was spooky with gaslight; the next was gay with frying sausages. They climbed. The next was the one, and it smelled of paint—the same green paint as on the outside of the house—on one of the doors and doorframes, but the wood was plainly charred under the paint.
“We had a fire, but we put it out with wash water before the engines got here, soapy water.”
The girl had a picture of threshing soap about in pails of water before applying it to the flames.
“This is the one,” the woman said, unlocking the next to last room from the back on the left. “All the rest are filled just now. Most of my lodgers never leave, only as they strike it rich——”
“Do they often strike it rich?”