to find that the window
commanded the back of another of the colleges. Kissing all four he
went to get a few necessaries and look for lodgings for himself.

When he was gone the landlady came up to talk a little with Sue, and
gather something of the circumstances of the family she had taken in.
Sue had not the art of prevarication, and, after admitting several
facts as to their late difficulties and wanderings, she was startled
by the landlady saying suddenly:

"Are you really a married woman?"

Sue hesitated; and then impulsively told the woman that her husband
and herself had each been unhappy in their first marriages, after
which, terrified at the thought of a second irrevocable union, and
lest the conditions of the contract should kill their love, yet
wishing to be together, they had literally not found the courage
to repeat it, though they had attempted it two or three times.
Therefore, though in her own sense of the words she was a married
woman, in the landlady's sense she was not.

The housewife looked embarrassed, and went downstairs. Sue sat by
the window in a reverie, watching the rain. Her quiet was broken by
the noise of someone entering the house, and then the voices of a
man and woman in conversation in the passage below. The landlady's
husband had arrived, and she was explaining to him the incoming of
the lodgers during his absence.

His voice rose in sudden anger. "Now who wants such a woman here?
and perhaps a confinement! ... Besides, didn't I say I wouldn't have
children? The hall and stairs fresh painted, to be kicked about by
them! You must have known all was not straight with 'em--coming like
that. Taking in a family when I said a single man."

The wife expostulated, but, as it seemed, the husband insisted on
his point; for presently a tap came to Sue's door, and the woman
appeared.

"I am sorry to tell you, ma'am," she said, "that I can't let you have
the room for the week after all. My husband objects; and therefore
I must ask you to go. I don't mind your staying over to-night, as
it is getting late in the afternoon; but I shall be glad if you can
leave early in the morning."

Though she knew that she was entitled to the lodging for a week, Sue
did not wish to create a disturbance between the wife and husband,
and she said she would leave as requested. When the landlady had
gone Sue looked out of the window again. Finding that the rain had
ceased she proposed to the boy