“You spoke of leaving New York for the west,” she said.
He laughed and shrugged, palms held upward.
“How far? I mean where is your home?”
He pointed to his cap lying on the arm of a chair, as if to say that were his home.
“I’ve got an aunt in Cleveland who wants me,” he added. “A little quiet house away out on one of the cross streets off Euclid, where there’s a room and eats and a place to write. I’ll start to walk, I guess.”
“Where are you staying in New York?”
He was laughing at her. “A little den up in Union Square—just a skylight. It’s a cell, Miss Musser, and even there, I have to stay out until midnight to sneak in without meeting the landlady.... Did you ever sleep in a room that had no window?”
“Mine has a window,” Pidge said.
“Then this isn’t yours?” He pointed to the closed folding doors of the inner room.
“Oh, no. Mine’s up higher, but it has a window. This is just a sitting room we sometimes use—Miss Claes and I—the lodger being away.”