questions, for I thought I should find out soon enough,
so I said I'd like to go up to my room a minute.

"'It's our room you'll mane,' she said. 'There's but the one, an' it's
hard enough for two to be slapin' on a bed that's barely the width o'
one.'

"My heart sank then, for I'd always had a place that was comfortable all
my life, but it sunk deeper when I went up there. A hall bedroom, with a
single bed an' a small table, with a washbowl an' small pitcher, one
chair an' some nails in the door for hanging things; that was all except
a torn shade at the window. I looked at the bed. The two ragged
comfortables were foul with long use. I thought of my nice bed down at
Spring Street, my own good sheets an' blankets an' all, an' I began to
cry.

"'You don't look as if you was used to the likes of it,' Bridget said.
'There's another room the same as this but betther. Why not ax for it?'

"I started down the stairs an' came right upon Mrs. Melrose, who smiled
as if she thought I had been enjoying myself.

"'I'm perfectly willing to try an' do your work as well as I know how,'
I said, 'but I must have a place to myself an' clean things in it.'

"'Highty-tighty!' says she. 'What impudence is this? You'll take what I
give you and be thankful to get it. Plenty as good as you have slept in
that room and never complained.'

"'Then it's time some one did,' I said. 'I don't ask anything but
decency, an' if you can't give it I must try elsewhere.'

"'Then you'd better set about it at once,' she says, an' with that I bid
her good-afternoon an' walked out. I had another number in my pocket,
an' I went straight there; an' this time I had sense enough to ask to
see my room. It was bare enough, but clean. There were only three in the
family, an' it was a little house on Perry Street. There I stayed two
years. They were strange years. The folks were set in their ways an'
they had some money. But every day of that time the lady cut off herself
from the meat what she thought I ought to have, an' ordered me to put
away the rest. She allowed no dessert except on Sunday, an' she kept
cake and preserves locked in an upstairs closet. I wouldn't have minded
that. What I did mind was that from the time I entered the house till I
left it there was never a word for me beyond an order, any more than if
I hadn't been a human being. She couldn't find fault. I was born clean,
an' that house shone from top to bottom; but a dog would have got far