“Excuse me, Mr. Pyecroft,” she called to the clergyman.  “So you and your friend want board and room,” the landlady repeated in a drawling tone, yet studying them sharply with heavy-penciled eyes.  “I run a select house, so I’ve got to be careful about whom I admit.  Consequently you will not object to answering a few questions.  You and your friend are working-women?”

“Yes.”

The heavy eyes had concluded their inventory.  “Perhaps both housekeepers?”

“Ye—­yes.”

Matilda had a double impulse to explain, first to clear Mrs. De Peyster of this unmerited indignity, and second to prevent their being once more turned away as servants.  But something kept her still.  And perhaps it was just as well.  Mrs. Gilbert, considering the two, did have a moment’s thought about refusing them; she, too, liked to maintain the social tone of her establishment, and certainly servants as guests did not help; but then the arid season for boarding-houses was at hand, and she was not one to sacrifice real money to mere principle.

“How long do you want to stay?”

“We don’t know yet.  Per—­perhaps several months.”

This was agreeable news to Mrs. Gilbert.  But it was not boarding-house policy to show it.

“When would you want to come in?”

“Now.”

“To-night!” The penciled eyebrows lifted in surprise.  “And your baggage?”

“We came to New York without any,” Matilda lied desperately.  “We’re—­we’re going to buy some things here.”

“Naturally, then, you expect to pay in advance.”

“Ah—­er—­at least a deposit.”

“One room or two?”

“One.”  One would come cheaper.

“Excuse me, Mr. Pyecroft,” she called again to the clergyman.  “This way.”  And she collected her silken skirt, and swished up two flights of stairs and into a bedroom at the back, where she turned on the light.  “A very comfortable room,” she went on in the voice of a tired and very superior auctioneer.  “Just vacated by a Wall Street broker and his wife; very well-connected people.  Bed and couch; easy-chairs; running hot and cold water.  And for it I’m making a special summer rate, with board, of only twenty-five dollars a week for two.”

“We’ll take it,” said Matilda.

“Very well.  Now the deposit—­how much can you pay?”

“Ah—­er—­say fifteen dollars?”

Mrs. Gilbert’s hands that tried to seem indifferent to money and that yet were remarkably prompt, took the bills Matilda held out and thrust them into the folds of her voluminous gown.

“Thank you.  Breakfast Sunday mornings from eight to ten.  Good-night.”  And with that her large pink-tinted ladyship made a rustling exit.

Mrs. De Peyster sank overcome into a chair, drew up her veil, and gazed about her.  The other of Mrs. Gilbert’s “easy"-chairs had a seat of faded and frayed cotton tapestry; there was a lumpy and unstable-looking couch; a yellow washstand with dandruffy varnish and cracked mirror; wall-paper with vast, uncataloguable flowers gangrenous in suggestion; on the ceiling a circle of over-plump dancing Cupids; and over against one wall a huge, broad, dark box that to Mrs. De Peyster’s amazed vision suggested an upended coffin, contrived for the comfort of some deceased with remarkable width of shoulder.