Deciding to devote the afternoon to looking for rooms, I hurried back to the Y. W. C. A. and approached the woman in charge of the Rooming Bureau. When she learned that my limit was two dollars and a half a week she shook her head. She had not had a room as low as that in at least two years. So late in the season and two rooms on the same floor? Impossible! When I reminded her of newspapers and magazine articles advising working women on the economic division of their wages her face crinkled into a smile. “Those people find out the wage of the average working girl—some don’t even take that trouble—then they sit at their desks and divide it up for her. Sometimes they make real touching stories. I’ve often wondered how much they are paid.” She looked me over. “Perhaps you can tell me? You are a writer.” The attack was so unexpected that I actually stuttered. When I asked why she had made such a guess she replied indifferently: “Only a professional social investigator or a writer could be so ignorant and at the same time so cock-sure. You are not a social investigator. At least I never saw one whose shoes were so clean this late in the week.” On my making a full confession her interest was aroused. When she was convinced that Alice and I purposed to live on our earnings she turned her catalogue of rooms over to me. Selecting twenty of what appeared to me to be the most desirable addresses I set out. It was after three o’clock when the door at the last address on my list closed behind me. The cheapest room I had seen was three dollars and a half a week. Its only window opened on a shaft and there was no heat of any sort. In an effort to bolster up my flagging spirits I became defiantly independent. Why confine myself to the Y. W. C. A. list? I had passed a number of attractive-looking houses with the sign “furnished rooms” out. Why not investigate them? Alice and I were both old enough, had sufficient experience and judgment, to see if anything was amiss. Just off one of the most beautiful squares in New York I came upon an unusually attractive-looking house with a furnished-room sign out. Even the sign itself was neater and more cheerful-appearing than any that had previously attracted my attention. The door was opened by the landlady. It was a charming room—on the second floor with a huge bay window—that overlooked a well-kept back yard. The bathroom was on the same floor, and in a little private hall just outside the door of the room there was a gas-stove with two burners. On learning that the rent was three dollars the week, including gas for cooking, I opened my pocketbook to pay a week advance. “Emily.”