At the end of three days we ’d picked out five rooms. Considered in a lump, they seemed fine; but tackling them separately, mamma could n’t decide which one was least objectionable. One was in a part of town that "looked damp"—a man across the street unfortunately sneezed just as we were passing a stone wall covered with green moss. The second smelt of cooking. On the steps of the third a groceryman was waiting to deliver several gallons of gasoline (this one was almost struck off the list). The fourth was near the river (we had the bad luck to be in that part of town when the tide was out), and from the windows of the fifth there was a merry little view of a graveyard. We simply could n’t make up our minds, and were standing in the middle of a narrow, rather shabby little street two or three blocks below the Square discussing the matter, when a door behind us opened and a mother and son (we turned to look) came out, followed by a gray-haired woman—evidently the landlady—who was doing the talking, in a very New England voice, for all three. The mother was slim and pretty, and had on a beautiful dress that went swish-swash-swish when she walked away, and the fellow looked like her; he was very handsome. "Well, I ’m real glad to know you," the landlady said to the fellow’s mother. "Jus’ seems ’s if I could n’t rest till I knew the young men’s folks; dustin’ their photographs every day makes it sort of different. It do—don’t it? Oh, yes—I ’ll take care of him. They get real mad at me, the young men do, sometimes, for makin’ them change their shoes when it’s snow-in’ and makin’ them wear their rubber coats when it’s rai-nin’. _They ’re_ in too much of a hurry, _they_ are. That’s what’s the matter with _them_." She gave the fellow a roguish look, and he and his mother walked up the street laughing as if they were very much pleased. "I think," said mamma (who had become strangely animated on hearing of the change of shoes)—"I think that before we decide on one of these five rooms we ’ll go in there." So we went up to the gray-haired woman, who had lingered outside to talk baby talk to a cat that was making gothic arches of itself all over the piazza, and in about seven minutes by the watch we ’d signed the lease of the last vacant rooms in the house. A short, steep staircase like the companionway of a ship leads up to a landing about the size of a kitchen table. The edges of the steps are covered with tin and are terribly slippery. The door on the left opens into my study, and at the end of that is my bedroom, and next to that is a great big bathroom (it’s bigger than the other two) with a porcelain tub and a shower which I am to share with the fellow who lives just across the staircase on the right. Mrs. Chester, the landlady, says: "All the young men thinks an awful lot of that bathroom."