"_Please_ wait!"--for the voluble landlady was already beginning to sniffle;--"I am perfectly willing to stay, Mrs. Meehan,--if you will promise to be a little patient about my rent until I secure a position--" "Oh, I will, Miss Greensleeve! I ain't plannin' to press you none! I know how it is with money and with young ladies. Easy come, easy go! Just give me what you can. I ain't fixed any too good myself, what with butchers and bakers and rent owed me and all like that. I guess I can trust you to act fair and square--" "Yes; I am square--so far." Mrs. Meehan began to sob, partly with relief, partly with a general tendency to sentimental hysteria: "I can see that, dearie. And say--if you're quiet, I ain't peekin' around corners and through key-holes. No, Miss Greensleeve; that ain't my style! Quiet behaved young ladies can have their company without me saying nothing to nobody. All I ask is that no lady will cut up flossy in any shape, form, or manner, but behave genteel and refined to one and all. I don't want no policeman in the area. That ain't much to ask, is it?" she gasped, fairly out of breath between eloquence and tears. "No," said Athalie with a faint smile, "it isn't much to ask." And so the agreement was concluded; Mrs. Meehan brought in fresh linen for bed and bathroom, pulled out the new bureau drawers and dusted them, carried away a few anaemic geraniums in pots, and swept the new hardwood floor with a dry mop, explaining that the entire apartment had been renovated and redecorated since the tragic episode of last August, and that all the furniture was brand new. "Her trunks and clothes and all like that was took by the police," explained Mrs. Meehan, "but she left some rubbish behind a sliding panel which they didn't find. I found it and I put it on the top shelf in the closet--" She dragged a chair thither, mounted it, and presently came trotting back to the front room, carrying in both arms a bulky box of green morocco and a large paper parcel bursting with odds and ends of tinsel and silk. These she dumped on the centre table, saying: "She had a cabinet-maker fix up a cupboard in the baseboard, and that's where she kept gimcracks. The police done me damage enough without my showin' them her hidin' place and the things she kept there. Here--I'll show it to you! It's full of keys and electric wires and switches--" She took Athalie by the arm and drew her over to the west side of the room. "You can't see nothing there, can you?" she demanded, pointing at the high wainscoting of dull wood polished by age. Athalie confessed she could not. "Look!" Mrs. Meehan passed her bony hand along the panels until her work-worn forefinger rested on a polished knot in the richly grained wood. Then she pushed; and the entire square of panels swung outward, lowering like a drawbridge, and presently rested flat on the floor. "How odd!" exclaimed Athalie, kneeling to see better.