“Yes, to Boston,” Miss Hansford replied, “to get you some clothes that
are clothes. Clarice Percy shan’t twit you any more with being
old-fashioned. I’m going to have my gray silk made for Paul’s wedding,
and you must have a gown to wear.”
“Oh, auntie, no; even if I am invited, which is doubtful, I do not want
to go,” Elithe exclaimed, thinking that nothing could tempt her to see
Clarice Percy married.
It was useless to oppose her aunt when her mind was made up, as it was
now, and the next day they started for Boston on the early boat. Miss
Hansford knew next to nothing of the city, and came near being run over
at the crossings two or three times before she reached the Adams House.
“I want two rooms with a door between,—good ones, too,” she said,
shaking her head fiercely at the office clerk after registering her own
name and Elithe’s.
Naturally they showed her communicating rooms, with a bath, first floor
front, looking on Washington Street.
“Oh, this is lovely!” Elithe cried, putting her head from the window and
looking up and down the narrow street crowded with cars, vehicles and
pedestrians.
It was her first experience in a big city, and she liked it. Her aunt,
meanwhile, was haggling over the price of the rooms, which seemed to her
exorbitant.
“And pay for what I eat besides? I’ll never do it!” she said to the
attendant, who, knowing that he had what he called a case, smiled
blandly and replied: “There are cheaper ones higher up and in the rear,
but there’s no bath.”
“Bath!” Miss Hansford rejoined. “Who asked for a bath? I didn’t. Show me
the rooms.”
They were on the fourth floor looking upon roofs and into a dreary
court, and the price was less than half of the apartments they had left.
“Don’t you think these will do?” Miss Hansford asked Elithe, whose face
was clouded, but who answered: “Yes, I think they will do.”
Something in her voice and the droop of her eyes betrayed her
disappointment, and, after thinking a moment, Miss Hansford said,
briskly: “Well, if you do, I don’t. We’ll go back where we came from,
bath and all.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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