“’Tain’t right for women in business not to do their share of the housework,” she would tell me, while leaning on a stub of a broom or wiping my mirror with a dirty rag. “I don’t mind doin’ for men—it’s only right I should, they bein’ men an’ payin’ me.” “The women pay you. I pay a half-dollar more than the man who vacated it without giving you notice. You told me so yourself.” “I ain’t sayin’ you don’t pay all the room’s worth,” she assured me, and maybe by this time having smeared my mirror to her satisfaction she would be propped against the facing of my door. “What I says an’ what I stands by is that it ain’t right for you and Hildegarde Hook not to do your rooms regular—you bein’ women an’ not men. No, it ain’t right, Miss Porter. You hadn’t oughter treat no woman like that.” When she found that I intended to take her at her word and give her her room, she became repentant and offered to let me “stay on.” Unfortunately for her good intentions the atmosphere of Greenwich Village had become boring. Even a woman’s hotel, the only vacancy to be found at that season, promised a welcome relief. My stay in that Adamless purgatory was not very long. Before I had been there one week an old woman occupying the room to the left of me objected to my using my typewriter between seven and eight in the evening. Before the end of my second week an old woman at my right positively forbade me to touch it mornings before eleven, and before I had completed my third week an old woman in front of me entered a violent protest against my using it at all. God defend me from idle women! In a fit of I’ll-take-anything-I-can-get I applied to the agent of the Phipps tenements. She had no vacancy, but on my second call, seeing that I was near desperation, she suggested that I go talk to a Mrs. Campbell who lived in another house owned by the same company. Mrs. Campbell was taking her sick daughter to Staten Island for the summer. For five dollars a week, one dollar and sixty cents above what she was paying for her flat unfurnished, she sublet to me for the summer. There were three small rooms, a minute clothes-closet, a toilet, gas, and both hot and cold water. On East Thirty-second Street between First and Second Avenues, this place was within walking distance of the A. S. P. C. A., and so saved both car-fare and time. Built around a court each of the forty-eight flats was so arranged that it opened on both the street and the court. As a consequence the ventilation was excellent. Four of the flats on each floor opened on a little balcony, and I was lucky enough to get one. When I mentioned that there was no bath, Mrs. Campbell looked pensive. After a pause her daughter explained. “There are two baths—one for men and the other for women. They are in the basement. Sundays people stand in line, taking turns at using them.” She paused and glanced at her mother, who was still gazing pensively into space. “We always—” She paused and again glanced at her mother.