The landlady, whose bulk seemed to crowd the hall-bedroom, leaned heavily against its frail door. Mary thought the woman's slow, brown eyes more than commonly suspicious and her round face implacably hard. The tenant, with all explanation frozen upon her lips, handed over the clinking bits of money. They fell into the big, extended palm as a few drops of water might fall into a basin. Mrs. Foote began slowly to count the coins. Mary watched, in fascinated silence, the counting of those few pieces of silver, each one of which seemed stained with her blood. She saw the landlady's expression change to one of incredulity. She saw the counting repeated. Mrs. Foote again thrust out her grimy fingers. "What's this?" she demanded. "It's----" Mary looked at the floor. "It's the rent," she concluded, in a whisper. "_What's_ the rent?" "That's all I have--just now. I thought--I thought, considerin' how long I've been here, you might wait a day for the rest, Mrs. Foote." The landlady opened her hand, and Mary's little store of coin dropped to the bed. "I can't take this," she said. "You mean," asked Mary, with a quick gasp of hope, "that you'll let me keep it till I get the rest?" "No, I don't mean nothin' of the sort," said Mrs. Foote. "I mean I've got to have the whole bill--right now." Mary's heart sank. "That's all I have," she said. She had sunk to a seat on the tumbled bed, beside her scattered coins. Her thin hands were locked across her knees; the dirty pink kimona slipped lower from her shoulders at every frequent cough, and her eyes sought those of Mrs. Foote in dumb appeal. Her russet hair fell dully disordered about her hollow cheeks, and the rouge on her lips was purple. "I'm sorry," pursued Mrs. Foote, who was too used to such incidents greatly to concern herself; "but I've got to make my living like anybody else does." "I was expectin' some money this evenin'," said Mary. "Hump!" sniffed the landlady. "You don't believe that?" "I don't care, Miss Morton; I can't care." "But I"--Mary's fingers knotted tighter about her knees--"I was promised it," she lied, "an' I'm dead sure to get it then." "I've heard that so many times," said Mrs. Foote, "that I knowed it by heart three year' ago." "I could pawn somethin'," suggested Mary. The landlady swept the bare room with a critical glance. "What?" she asked. There was no adequate answer to be made. Mary had tried to pledge her coat a few days before, and had been offered only an inadequate twenty-five cents for it. "Then you won't--you can't wait?" "No, I can't. I'm a sick woman myself; my rent's due, Miss Mary, an' the honest truth is that there's such a lot of women wantin' rooms that I'd only be doin' a injustice to my children not to take in a lady that could pay prompt--for a while."