Meanwhile Joan had been out on her own and taken a room for herself in a house standing in a quiet, withdrawn square in the neighbourhood of King's Road, Chelsea. To call it a room was to dignify it by a title to which it could lay no real claim. It was an attic, up the last rickety flight of stairs, with roofs that sloped down within two feet of the ground, and a diminutive window from which one could get but the barest glimpse of the skies. Still it had possibilities, its aspect was not so terribly common-place as had been that of the other rooms which Joan had seen that morning. The sloping roofs, the small pane of glass which looked out higher than the neighbouring chimney-tops, were in their way attractive. She would take it, she told a somewhat surprised landlady, and would pay--everything included--ten shillings a week for the noble apartment. The "everything included" swept in breakfast--"Such as a young lady like yourself would eat, Miss"--the woman told her, and attendance. Suppers and fires she would have to provide for herself, though Mrs. Carew was prepared to cook for her; lunch, of course, fell in office hours. On Saturday, therefore, and having forestalled Miss Nigel's request by announcing that she was leaving for good, Joan moved her luggage over to her new home and took possession. "I am going to like it better than I liked being at Shamrock House," she told Rose, who had come to assist in the moving. "It is more my own, I can do just as I like here." Rose was craning her neck to see out of the window's limited compass. "Just as you like," she repeated, laughing as she spoke, "on twenty-five shillings a week and an attic. You are not ambitious, my child." She turned round to face the room; even in mid afternoon, with the sun shining outside, it was dim--the corners in positive darkness. "I don't think I should have chosen it," she said; "there is no sun, and"--she shook the thought off--"who else is in the house, did you ask?" "There was not any need to," Joan answered. "Mrs. Carew, that is my landlady, you know, told me all their family histories while I was making up my mind whether I would come or not. Wait a minute," she paused in her unpacking to tick them off on her fingers. "There is the ground floor lady, who is an artist's model. No need to work just now though, for the last gentleman that painted her took a fancy to her and is paying for her at present. Drawing-room floor, old foreign lady who never seems to get out of bed. Second floor, retired army officer, 'fond of drink, more's the pity,'" she mimicked Mrs. Carew's voice, "and second floor back, young lady actress, who is not perhaps as good as she might be, 'but there, you can't always be blaming people'; and third floor, me! Doesn't sound respectable does it? But after Miss Nigel I am afraid of respectability."