"Gentlemen are so much more considerate," said Mrs. Meares.
Their willingness to be imposed upon made Sylvia contemptuous of the sex she had adopted, and she tried to spur her father to protest when his bed was still unmade at four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Why don't you make it?" he suggested. "I don't like to worry poor Mrs. Meares."
Sylvia, however contemptuous of manhood, had no intention of relinquishing its privileges; she firmly declined to have anything to do with the making of beds.
The breakfast-room was placed below the level of the street. Here, in an atmosphere of cat-haunted upholstery and broken springs, of overcooked vegetables and dingy fires, yet withal of a kind of frowsy comfort, Sylvia sometimes met the other lodgers. One of them was Baron von Statten, a queer German, whom Sylvia could not make out at all, for he spoke English as if he had been taught by a maid-of-all-work with a bad cold, powdered his pink face, and wore three rings, yet was so poor that sometimes he stayed in bed for a week at a stretch, pending negotiations with his laundress. The last piece of information Sylvia obtained from Clara, the servant, who professed a great contempt for the baron. Mrs. Meares, on the other hand, derived much pride from his position in her house, which she pointed out was really that of an honored guest, since he owed now nearly seven weeks' rent; she never failed to refer to him by his title with warm affection. Another lodger was a Welsh pianist called Morgan, who played the piano all day long and billiards for as much of the night as he could. He was a bad-tempered young man with long black hair and a great antipathy to the baron, whom he was always trying to insult; indeed, once at breakfast he actually poured a cup of coffee over him.
"Mr. Morgan!" Mrs. Meares had cried. "No Irishman would have done that."
"No Irishman would ever do anything," the pianist snapped, "if he could get somebody else to do it for him."
Sylvia welcomed the assault, because the scalding coffee drove the baron to unbutton his waistcoat in a frenzy of discomfort and thereby confirmed Clara's legend about the scarcity of his linen.
The third lodger was Mr. James Monkley, about whom Sylvia was undecided; sometimes she liked him very much, at other times she disliked him equally. He had curly red hair, finely cut red lips, a clear complexion, and an authoritative, determined manner, but his eyes, instead of being the pleasant blue they ought to have been in such a face, were of a shade of muddy green and never changed their expression. Sylvia once mentioned about Mr. Monkley's eyes to Clara, who said they were like a fish.