If any fair proportion of my readers were likely to be members of my own profession, I should expect the above announcement to call forth more sympathetic handkerchiefs than have waved in unison for many a day. But I don't expect anything of the sort; I know my business too well to suppose for a moment that any boarding-house proprietor, no matter how full her rooms, or how good pay her boarders are, ever finds time to read a story. Even if they did, they'd be so lost in wonder at one of themselves finding time to _write_ a story, that they'd forget the whole plot and point of the thing.
I can't help it, though--I _must_ tell about poor dear Mrs. Perry, even if I run the risk of cook's overdoing the beef, so that Mr. Bluff, who is English, and the best of pay, can't get the rare cut he loves so well. Mrs. Perry's story has run in my head so long, that it has made me forget to take change from the grocer at least once to my knowledge, and even made me lose a good boarder, by showing a room before the bed was made up. They say that poets get things out of their heads by writing them down, and I don't know why boarding-house keepers can't do the same thing.
It's about three months since Mrs. Perry came here to board. I'm very sure about the time, and it was the day I was to pay my quarter's rent, and to-morrow will be quarter-day again; thank the Lord I've got the money ready.
I _didn't_ have the money ready then, though, and the landlord left his temper behind him, instead of a receipt, and I was just having a little cry in my apron, and asking the Lord _why_ it was that a poor lone woman who was working her finger-ends off should have such a hard time, when the door-bell rang.
"That's the landlord again. _I_ know his ways, the mean wretch!" said I to myself, hastily rubbing my eyes dry, and making up before the mirror in the hat-tree as fierce a face as I could. Then I snatched open the door, and tried to make believe my heart _wasn't_ in my mouth.
But the landlord wasn't there, and I've always been a little sorry, for I was looking so savage, that a wee little woman, who _was_ at the door, trembled all over, and started to go down the steps.
"Don't go, ma'am," I said, very quickly, with the best smile I could put on (and I think I've been long enough in the business to give the right kind of a smile to a person that looks like a new boarder). "Don't go--I thought it was--I thought it was--somebody else that rang. Come in, do."