One of these secrets began to hint at its own hideous nature with
every convulsive tick of the metre. It hiccuped nickels, and as Win's
terrified eyes, instead of taking in New York, watched the spendthrift
contrivance yelping for her dollars, she remembered that she owned but
two hundred. She had had to be "decent" about tips on board. But forty
pounds--two hundred dollars--had looked magnificent in her hand bag
that morning. Paper money spread itself in such a lordly manner and
seemed able to buy so many separate things. But by the time the
merciless taxi had bumped her through devious ways up to Fifty-Fourth
Street, three of the beautiful green dollar bills were as good as
gone.

She longed to pray "Oh, _do_ stop taxying!" at the doorstep before she
darted up to inquire whether Miss Hampshire still kept the
boarding-house; and it was maddening to hear that "teuf, teuf"
desperately going on, chewing its silver cud, in the long pause before
an answer came to the bell.

A black woman who flung open the door was startling as a
jack-in-the-box for the English girl. Win had thought of American
negroes but vaguely, as a social problem in the newspapers or dear
creatures in Thomas Nelson Page's books. What with the surprise and
the nervous strain of the disappearing dollars, she asked no further
questions after the welcome news that Miss Hampshire existed and had a
"room to rent." Hastily she paid off the chauffeur, adding something
for himself (it seemed like tipping the man at the guillotine) and
breathed again only when her trunk and dressing-bag blocked the narrow
hall.

"I'm sure I don't see whoever's goin' to tote them things up to the
third story," sighed the female jack-in-the-box, who was, after all,
more purple than black when you looked closely, an illusion produced
by a dusting of pink powder over a dark surface. "And how do I know
Miss Hampshire'll _take_ you?"

"But you said there was a room." The freeborn independence of a whole
nation, irrespective of colour, shocked the effete stranger's breath
away. She gasped slightly.

"Yeh. But that ain't to say you can have it. Miss Hampshire's mighty
pertickler about her woman boarders," explained the purple lady. "You
catched me all of a heap or I wouldn't o' let that feller slam yer
things into the house and git away. You'll have to wait till I call
Miss Hampshire. _She'll_ talk to you."

"Tell her I was recommended by Miss Ellis, from London who boarded
h