He settled up at once and went forth to find less sumptuous lodgings.  He had to wander far and seek with diligence, but he succeeded.  They made him pay in advance—­four dollars and a half; this secured both bed and food for a week.  The good-natured, hardworked landlady took him up three flights of narrow, uncarpeted stairs and delivered him into his room.  There were two double-bedsteads in it, and one single one.  He would be allowed to sleep alone in one of the double beds until some new boarder should come, but he wouldn’t be charged extra.

So he would presently be required to sleep with some stranger!  The thought of it made him sick.  Mrs. Marsh, the landlady, was very friendly and hoped he would like her house—­they all liked it, she said.

“And they’re a very nice set of boys.  They carry on a good deal, but that’s their fun.  You see, this room opens right into this back one, and sometimes they’re all in one and sometimes in the other; and hot nights they all sleep on the roof when it don’t rain.  They get out there the minute it’s hot enough.  The season’s so early that they’ve already had a night or two up there.  If you’d like to go up and pick out a place, you can.  You’ll find chalk in the side of the chimney where there’s a brick wanting.  You just take the chalk and—­but of course you’ve done it before.”

“Oh, no, I haven’t.”

“Why, of course you haven’t—­what am I thinking of?  Plenty of room on the Plains without chalking, I’ll be bound.  Well, you just chalk out a place the size of a blanket anywhere on the tin that ain’t already marked off, you know, and that’s your property.  You and your bed-mate take turnabout carrying up the blanket and pillows and fetching them down again; or one carries them up and the other fetches them down, you fix it the way you like, you know.  You’ll like the boys, they’re everlasting sociable—­except the printer.  He’s the one that sleeps in that single bed—­the strangest creature; why, I don’t believe you could get that man to sleep with another man, not if the house was afire.  Mind you, I’m not just talking, I know.  The boys tried him, to see.  They took his bed out one night, and so when he got home about three in the morning—­he was on a morning paper then, but he’s on an evening one now—­there wasn’t any place for him but with the iron-moulder; and if you’ll believe me, he just set up the rest of the night—­he did, honest.  They say he’s cracked, but it ain’t so, he’s English—­they’re awful particular.  You won’t mind my saying that.  You—­you’re English?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so.  I could tell it by the way you mispronounce the words that’s got a’s in them, you know; such as saying loff when you mean laff —­but you’ll get over that.  He’s a right down good fellow, and a little sociable with the photographer’s boy and the caulker and the blacksmith that work in the navy yard, but not so much with the others.  The fact is,