“I don't know,” crowed the old man, in a high senile note. “You want table board or rooms?” “I don't want board at all,” began Lemuel again. “What?” crowed the old man; and he put up his hand to his ear. People were beginning to put their heads out of the neighbouring windows, and to walk slowly as they went by, so as to hear what he and the old man were saying. He could not run away now, and he went boldly up to the door of the large house and rang. A girl came, and he asked her, with a flushed face, if Miss Amanda Grier boarded there; somehow he could not bear to ask for Miss Dudley. “Well,” the girl said, “she _rooms_ here,” as if that might be a different thing to Lemuel altogether. “Oh!” he said. “Is she in?” “Well, you can walk in,” said the girl, “and I'll see.” She came back to ask, “Who shall I say called?” “Mr. Barker,” said Lemuel, and then glowed with shame because he had called himself Mister. The girl did not come back, but she hardly seemed gone before 'Manda Grier came into the room. He did not know whether she would speak to him, but she was as pleasant as could be, and said he must come right up to her and S'tira's room. It was pretty high up, but he did not notice the stairs, 'Manda Grier kept talking so; and when he got to it, and 'Manda Grier dashed the door open, and told him to walk right in, he would not have known but he was in somebody's sitting-room. A curtained alcove hid the bed, and the room was heated by a cheerful little kerosene stove; there were bright folding carpet-chairs, and the lid of the washstand had a cloth on it that came down to the floor, and there were plants in the window. There was a mirror on the wall, framed in black walnut with gilt moulding inside, and a family-group photograph in the same kind of frame, and two chromes, and a clock on a bracket. Statira seemed surprised to see him; the room was pretty warm, and her face was flushed. He said it was quite mild out, and she said, “Was it?” Then she ran and flung up the window, and said, “Why, so it was,” and that she had been in the house all day, and had not noticed the weather.