ove Thirty-fourth. They say
it's kind of strict, but, gee! there's a' _ausgezeichnet_ bunch of dames
there, artists and everything, and they say they feed you swell, and it
only costs eight bucks a week."

"Well, maybe I'll look at it," said Una, dubiously.

Neither the forbidding name nor Bessie's moral recommendation made the
Home for Girls sound tempting, but Una was hungry for companionship;
she was cold now toward the unvarying, unimaginative desires of men.
Among the women "artists and everything" she might find the friends she
needed.

The Temperance and Protection Home Club for Girls was in a solemn,
five-story, white sandstone structure with a severe doorway of iron
grill, solid and capable-looking as a national bank. Una rang the bell
diffidently. She waited in a hall that, despite its mission settee and
red-tiled floor, was barrenly clean as a convent. She was admitted to
the business-like office of Mrs. Harriet Fike, the matron of the Home.

Mrs. Fike had a brown, stringy neck and tan bangs. She wore a mannish
coat and skirt, flat shoes of the kind called "sensible" by everybody
except pretty women, and a large silver-mounted crucifix.

"Well?" she snarled.

"Some one-- I'd like to find out about coming here to
live--to see the place, and so on. Can you have somebody show me one of
the rooms?"

"My dear young lady, the first consideration isn't to 'have somebody
show you' or anybody else a room, but to ascertain if you are a fit
person to come here."

Mrs. Fike jabbed at a compartment of her desk, yanked out a
corduroy-bound book, boxed its ears, slammed it open, glared at Una in a
Christian and Homelike way, and began to shoot questions:

"Whatcha name?"

"Una Golden."

"Miss uh Miss?"

"I didn't quite--"

"Miss or Mrs., I _said_. Can't you understand English?"

"See here, I'm not being sent to jail that I know of!" Una rose,
tremblingly.

Mrs. Fike merely waited and snapped: "Sit down. You look as though you
had enough sense to understand that we can't let people we don't know
anything about enter a decent place like this.... Miss or Mrs., I said?"

"Miss," Una murmured, feebly sitting down again.

"What's your denomination?... No agnostics or Catholics allowed!"

Una heard herself meekly declaring, "Methodist."

"Smoke? Swear? Drink liquor? Got any bad habits?"

"No!"

"Got a lover, sweetheart, gentleman friend? If so, what name or names?"

"No."

"That's what they all say.