“There is a room vacant,” admitted the spirit of the house unwillingly.

“I’d like to see it.”

As he spoke, he was mounting the stairs; she must, perforce, follow.  On the third floor she passed him and led the way to a small, morosely papered front room, almost glaringly clean.

“All right, if I can have a work-table in it and if it isn’t too much,” he said, after one comprehensive glance around.

“The price is five dollars a week.”

Had Banneker but known it, this was rather high.  The Brashear rooming-house charged for its cleanliness, physical and moral.  “Can I move in at once?” he inquired.

“I don’t know you nor anything about you, Mr. Banneker,” she replied, but not until they had descended the stairs and were in the cool, dim parlor.  At the moment of speaking, she raised a shade, as if to help in the determination.

“Is that necessary?  They didn’t ask me when I registered at the hotel.”

Mrs. Brashear stared, then smiled.  “A hotel is different.  Where are you stopping?”

“At the St. Denis.”

“A very nice place.  Who directed you here?”

“No one.  I strolled around until I found a street I liked, and looked around until I found a house I liked.  The card in the window—­”

“Of course.  Well, Mr. Banneker, for the protection of the house I must have references.”

“References?  You mean letters from people?”

“Not necessarily.  Just a name or two from whom I can make inquiries.  You have friends, I suppose.”

“No.”

“Your family—­”

“I haven’t any.”

“Then the people in the place where you work.  What is your business, by the way?”

“I expect to go on a newspaper.”

“Expect?” Mrs. Brashear stiffened in defense of the institution.  “You have no place yet?”

He answered not her question, but her doubt.  “As far as that is concerned, I’ll pay in advance.”

“It isn’t the financial consideration,” she began loftily—­“alone,” she added more honestly.  “But to take in a total stranger—­”

Banneker leaned forward to her.  “See here, Mrs. Brashear; there’s nothing wrong about me.  I don’t get drunk.  I don’t smoke in bed.  I’m decent of habit and I’m clean.  I’ve got money enough to carry me.  Couldn’t you take me on my say-so?  Look me over.”

Though it was delivered with entire gravity, the speech provoked a tired and struggling smile on the landlady’s plain features.  She looked.

“Well?” he queried pleasantly.  “What do you think?  Will you take a chance?”

That suppressed motherliness which, embodying the unformulated desire to look after and care for others, turns so many widows to taking lodgers, found voice in Mrs. Brashear’s reply: 

“You’ve had a spell of sickness, haven’t you?”

“No,” he said, a little sharply.  “Where did you get that idea?”