luctantly, willing to assume that of her prospective lodger. She was
puzzled about something, Rose could see; disposed to be very watchful
and at no pains to conceal this attitude.

Well, she'd probably learned that she had to watch, poor thing! And, for
that matter, Rose would probably have to do some watching on her own
account. And, if the fact was there, why bother to keep up a
contradictory fiction. So Rose asked for a receipt.

The matter of the trunk was easily disposed of. Rose had a check for it.
It was at the Polk Street Station. There was a cigar and news stand two
blocks down, the landlady said, where an expressman had his
headquarters. There was a blue sign out in front: "Schulz Express"; Rose
couldn't miss it.

The landlady went away to write out a receipt. Rose closed the door
after her and locked it.

It was a purely symbolistic act. She wasn't going to change her clothes
or anything, and she didn't particularly want to keep anybody out. But,
in a sense in which it had never quite been true before, this was her
room, a room where any one lacking her specific invitation to enter,
would be an intruder--a condition that had not obtained either in her
mother's house or in Rodney's.

She smiled widely over the absurdity of indulging in a pleasurable
feeling of possession in a squalid little cubby-hole like this. The
wall-paper was stained and faded, the paint on the soft-wood floor worn
through in streaks; there was an iron bed--a double bed, painted light
blue and lashed with string where one of its joints showed a disposition
to pull out. The mattress on the bed was lumpy. There was a
dingy-looking oak bureau with a rather small but pretty good plate-glass
mirror on it; a marble topped, black walnut wash-stand; a pitcher of the
plainest and cheapest white ware standing in a bowl on top of it, and a
highly ornate, hand-painted slop-jar--the sole survivor, evidently, of a
much prized set--under the lee of it. The steep gable of the roof cut
away most of one side of the room, though there would be space for
Rose's trunk to stand under it, and across the corner, at a curiously
distressing angle, hung an inadequate curtain that had five or six
clothes hooks behind it.

In the foreground of the view out of the window, was a large oblong
plateau--the flat roof of an extension which had casually been attached
to the front of the building and carried it forward to the sidewalk over
what had once been a small