"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.
"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."
"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."
"Very well. Now the deposit--how much can you pay?"
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.
"Matilda!" she shiveringingly ejaculated. "I didn't know there was anything like it in the world!"
"I know, ma'am, that it's not fit for you," grieved Matilda. "But--it's better than nothing."
"And that thing there!" pointing a shaking finger at the abnormal coffin. "What's that?"
Whereupon Matilda proceeded to let down that _sine qua non_ of a profitable boarding-house, while Mrs. De Peyster, dismayed, looked for the first time in her life upon the miracle of the unfolding of a folding-bed. Her mistress's slumber prepared for Matilda then softened the inaccuracies of the couch's surface for her own more humble repose.