He was very happy; and he said to himself that he must try to be very good and to merit the fortune that had befallen him. He must not let it turn his head, or seem more than it really was; after all it was merely a chance to be heard that he was given. He instinctively strove to arrest the wheel which was bringing him up, and must carry him down if it kept on moving. With an impulse of the old heathen superstition lingering in us all, he promised his god, whom he imagined to be God, that he would be very grateful and humble if He would work a little miracle for him, and let the wheel carry him up without carrying him over and down. In the unconscious selfishness which he had always supposed morality, he believed that the thing most pleasing to his god would be some immediate effort in his own behalf, of prudent industry or frugality; and he made haste to escape from the bliss of his high hopes as if it were something that was wrong in itself, and that he would perhaps be punished for. He went to the restaurant where he had breakfasted, and bargained for board and lodging by the week. It was not so cheap as he had expected to get it; with an apparent flexibility, the landlord was rigorous on the point of a dollar a day for the room; and Ray found that he must pay twelve dollars a week for his board and lodging instead of the ten he had set as a limit. But he said to himself that he must take the risk, and must make up the two dollars, somehow. His room was at the top of the house, and it had a view of the fourth story of a ten-story apartment-house opposite; but it had a southerly exposure, and there was one golden hour of the day when the sun shone into it, over the shoulder of a lower edifice next to the apartment-house, and round the side of a clock tower beyond the avenue. He could see a bit of the châlet-roof of an elevated railroad station; he could see the tops of people’s heads in the street below if he leaned out of his window far enough, and he had the same bird’s-eye view of the passing carts and carriages. He shared it with the sparrows that bickered in the window-casing, and with the cats that crouched behind the chimneys and watched the progress of the sparrows’ dissensions with furtive and ironical eyes. Within, the slope of the roof gave a picturesque slant to the ceiling. The room was furnished with an American painted set; there was a clock on the little shelf against the wall that looked as if it were French; but it was not going, and there was no telling what accent it might tick with if it were wound up. There was a little mahogany table in one corner near the window to write on, and he put his books up on the shelf on each side of the clock.