The last place they stopped at was in Royal street. The entrance was bad. It was narrow even for those two. The walls were stained by dampness, and the smell of a totally undrained soil came up through the floor. The stairs ascended a few steps, came too near a low ceiling, and shot forward into cavernous gloom to find a second rising place farther on. But the rooms, when reached, were a tolerably pleasant disappointment, and the proprietress a person of reassuring amiability. She bestirred herself in an obliging way that was the most charming thing yet encountered. She gratified the young people every moment afresh with her readiness to understand or guess their English queries and remarks, hung her head archly when she had to explain away little objections, delivered her No sirs with gravity and her Yes sirs with bright eagerness, shook her head slowly with each negative announcement, and accompanied her affirmations with a gracious bow and a smile full of rice powder. She rendered everything so agreeable, indeed, that it almost seemed impolite to inquire narrowly into matters, and when the question of price had to come up it was really difficult to bring it forward, and Richling quite lost sight of the economic rules to which he had silently acceded in the _Rue Du Maine_. "And you will carpet the floor?" he asked, hovering off of the main issue. "Put coppit? Ah! cettainlee!" she replied, with a lovely bow and a wave of the hand toward Mrs. Richling, whom she had already given the same assurance. "Yes," responded the little wife, with a captivated smile, and nodded to her husband. "We want to get the decentest thing that is cheap," he said, as the three stood close together in the middle of the room. The landlady flushed. "No, no, John," said the wife, quickly, "don't you know what we said?" Then, turning to the proprietress, she hurried to add, "We want the cheapest thing that is decent." But the landlady had not waited for the correction. "_Dis_sent! You want somesin _dis_sent!" She moved a step backward on the floor, scoured and smeared with brick-dust, her ire rising visibly at every heart-throb, and pointing her outward-turned open hand energetically downward, added:-- "'Tis yeh!" She breathed hard. "_Mais_, no; you don't _want_ somesin dissent. No!" She leaned forward interrogatively: "You want somesin tchip?" She threw both elbows to the one side, cast her spread hands off in the same direction, drew the cheek on that side down into the collar-bone, raised her eyebrows, and pushed her upper lip with her lower, scornfully. At that moment her ear caught the words of the wife's apologetic amendment. They gave her fresh wrath and new opportunity. For her new foe was a woman, and a woman trying to speak in defence of the husband against whose arm she clung.