"I'm sorry you are going," Charles said. "I wish we could be neighbors."
"Well, so am I," the other responded, listlessly, "but we can't have everything our way. After all, the sleeping is good in the parks such weather as this. I've done it, and I can do it again, but I sha'n't need a trunk. I'll leave it. And I'll pay Mrs. Reilly some day. I've always paid my way."
Some one was coming. It was the landlady herself. Her face was very grave and full of feeling. She seemed slightly surprised at finding the two men together. Charles explained how they had met at breakfast.
"And he sent you to me?" she said. "He recommended me?"
"Yes, that is how I got the address," Charles returned.
She turned on the young man suddenly. She was trying to smile, though her face was full of contradictory emotions. "Mr. Mason," she faltered, as she touched him on his arm, "I must tell you the truth, and I'll do it right here, facing this gentleman. I hardly slept a wink last night, tired as I was from house-cleaning and beating carpets, because I said what I did yesterday about you leaving. And now I hear in this roundabout way that you have been trying to help me. Humph!" she laughed, making a sound in her throat like a suppressed sob, "do you think I'm going to let you go? Not on your life. I've never had a young man under my roof that I liked better. I'd rather keep you here for nothing than to get money for the room from some of the scamps that are floating about."
"You are very good, Mrs. Reilly," Mason said, with emotion on his part, "but I don't think, owing you for three weeks already, that—"
"Three weeks nothing! Cut that out!" she exclaimed. She strode to a window and examined the tattered shade. "There is no demand for rooms now, anyway. Do you hear me, you are going to stay? I've got to have new shades here, that's all there is about it. Yes, I want you to stay, Mr. Mason, and that settles it. You will find work, I'm sure of it. It is a dull season, that's all. Business will pick up later. It always does."
Mason was blandly protesting, his color high in his cheeks, when she suddenly whirled from the room.
"You are to stay!" she called back from the head of the stairs. "You talk to him, sir," she added to Charles. "He is a nice young man and needs a home of some sort."