oncerned her. Perfect
candor, I was fast learning, was the only way in which one in my
desperate situation could hope for any degree of sympathetic treatment,
as the time for all silly pride was passed.

Then Mrs. Pitbladder explained the system upon which the house was run.
I could have a room all to myself for a dollar and a half a week, or I
could sleep in the dormitory for ten cents a night, or fifty cents a
week; all terms payable in advance. The latter fact she was particular
to impress upon me. As to food, she named a price which fairly took away
my breath. Six cents each for meals--six cents each for breakfast,
dinner, and supper! I said at once I would become a boarder, and that I
would take a cot in the dormitory, for which I would pay from night to
night.

At this juncture the girl who answered to the name of May finished
undulating the last strand of gray hair, and as she lifted it off her
mistress's face that lady raised her head and we looked at each other
for the first time. She was somewhere between sixty-five and seventy,
and very fat. Mrs. Pitbladder's face was a surprise to me, for all it
was a round, red face--the very sort of face in which one would have
expected good nature to repose. Its predominating features were a huge,
beaked nose and high cheek-bones which encroached to an alarming degree
upon the eye-sockets, wherein little dark, furtive eyes regarded me
fixedly. It was a face which even the most unsophisticated observer
could scarcely fail to characterize as that of a woman hardened in every
sort of petty tyranny, a woman who, having the power to make others
uncomfortable, found infinite pleasure in doing so, quite apart from any
motive of selfish interest. To be sure, I did not read all this in Mrs.
Pitbladder's face by the end of our first meeting. The supreme question
to be settled, the only one which had for me a vital interest then, was
how long I might still put off utter destitution in the event of my not
finding work within the ensuing week.

The terms were always in advance, Mrs. Pitbladder again repeated, as she
entered my name and age in a long book which May brought from the dark
mahogany desk that matched the rest of the well-made furniture in the
spacious room. I would now pay her, she said, ten cents for the bed I
was to sleep in that night, and my board money would be paid meal by
meal to the woman in charge of the dining-room. I gave her a
twenty-five-cent piece. I had r