weighted down by the constant necessity of correcting her husband’s statement of their wants. This she could do, because his exactions were all in the direction of her comfort.
“But, John,” she would say each time as they returned to the street and resumed their quest, “those things cost; you can’t afford them, can you?”
“Why, you can’t be comfortable without them,” he would answer.
“But that’s not the question, John. We must take cheaper lodgings, mustn’t we?”
Then John would be silent, and by littles their gayety would rise again.
One landlady was so good-looking, so manifestly and entirely Caucasian, so melodious of voice, and so modest in her account of the rooms she showed, that Mrs. Richling was captivated. The back room on the second floor, overlooking the inner court and numerous low roofs beyond, was suitable and cheap.
“Yes,” said the sweet proprietress, turning to Richling, who hung in doubt whether it was quite good enough, “yesseh, I think you be pretty well in that room yeh.1 Yesseh, I’m shoe you be verrie well; yesseh.”
“Can we get them at once?”
“Yes? At once? Yes? Oh, yes?”
No downward inflections from her.
“Well,” – the wife looked at the husband; he nodded, – “well, we’ll take it.”
“Yes?” responded the landlady; “well?” leaning against a bedpost and smiling with infantile diffidence, “you dunt want no ref’ence?”
“No,” said John, generously, “oh, no; we can trust each other that far, eh?”
“Oh, yes?” replied the sweet creature; then suddenly changing countenance, as though she remembered something. “But daz de troub’ – de room not goin’ be vacate for t’ree mont’.”
She stretched forth her open palms and smiled, with one arm still around the bedpost.
“Why,” exclaimed Mrs. Richling, the very statue of astonishment, “you said just now we could have it at once!”
“Dis room? Oh, no; nod dis room.”
“I don’t see how I could have misunderstood you.”
The landlady lifted her shoulders, smiled, and clasped her hands across each other under her throat. Then throwing them apart she said brightly: —
“No, I say at Madame La Rose. Me, my room is all fill’. At Madame La Rose, I say, I think you be pritty well. I’m shoe you be verrie well at Madame La Rose. I’m sorry. But you kin paz yondeh – ’tiz juz ad the cawneh? And I am shoe I think you be pritty well at Madame La Rose.”
She kept up the repetition, though Mrs. Richling, incensed, had turned her back, and Richling was saying good-day.
“She did say the room was vacant!” exclaimed the little wife, as they reached the sidewalk. But the next moment there came a quick twinkle from her eye, and, waving her husband to go on without her, she said, “You kin paz yondeh; at Madame La Rose I am shoe you be pritty sick.” Thereupon she took his arm, – making everybody stare and smile to see a lady and gentleman arm in arm by daylight, – and they went merrily on their way.
The last place they stopped at was in Royal street. The entrance was bad. It was narrow even for those two. The walls were stained by dampness, and the smell of a totally undrained soil came up through the floor. The stairs ascended a few steps, came too near a low ceiling, and shot forward into cavernous gloom to find a second rising place farther on. But the rooms, when reached, were a tolerably pleasant disappointment, and the proprietress a person of reassuring amiability.
She bestirred herself in an obliging way that was the most charming thing yet encountered. She gratified the young people every moment afresh with her readiness to understand or guess their English queries and remarks, hung her head archly when she had to explain away little objections, delivered her No sirs with gravity and her Yes sirs with bright eagerness, shook her head slowly with each negative announcement, and accompanied her affirmations with a gracious bow and a smile full of rice powder.
She rendered everything so agreeable, indeed, that it almost seemed impolite to inquire narrowly into matters, and when the question of price had to come up it was really difficult to bring it forward, and Richling quite lost sight of the economic rules to which he had silently acceded in the Rue Du Maine.
“And you will carpet the floor?” he asked, hovering off of the main issue.
“Put coppit? Ah! cettainlee!” she replied, with a lovely bow and a wave of the hand toward Mrs. Richling, whom she had already given the same assurance.
“Yes,” responded the little wife, with a captivated smile, and nodded to her husband.
“We want to get the decentest thing that is cheap,” he said, as the three stood close together in the middle of the room.
The landlady flushed.
“No, no, John,” said the wife, quickly, “don’t you know what we said?” Then, turning to the proprietress, she hurried to add, “We want the cheapest thing that is decent.”
But the landlady had not waited for the correction.
“Dissent! You want somesin dissent!” She moved a step backward on the floor, scoured and smeared with brick-dust, her ire rising visibly at every heart-throb, and pointing her outward-turned open hand energetically downward, added: —
“’Tis yeh!” She breathed hard. “Mais, no; you don’t want somesin dissent. No!” She leaned forward interrogatively: “You want somesin tchip?” She threw both elbows to the one side, cast her spread hands off in the same direction, drew the cheek on that side down into the collar-bone, raised her eyebrows, and pushed her upper lip with her lower, scornfully.
At that moment her ear caught the words of the wife’s apologetic amendment. They gave her fresh wrath and new opportunity. For her new foe was a woman, and a woman trying to speak in defence of the husband against whose arm she clung.
“Ah-h-h!” Her chin went up; her eyes shot lightning; she folded her arms fiercely, and drew herself to her best height; and, as Richling’s eyes shot back in rising indignation, cried: —
“Ziss pless? ’Tis not ze pless! Zis pless – is diss’nt pless! I am diss’nt woman, me! Fo w’at you come in yeh?”
“My dear madam! My husband” —
“Dass you’ uzban’?” pointing at him.
“Yes!” cried the two Richlings at once.
The woman folded her arms again, turned half-aside, and, lifting her eyes to the ceiling, simply remarked, with an ecstatic smile: —
“Humph!” and left the pair, red with exasperation, to find the street again through the darkening cave of the stair-way.
It was still early the next morning, when Richling entered his wife’s apartment with an air of brisk occupation. She was pinning her brooch at the bureau glass.
“Mary,” he exclaimed, “put something on and come see what I’ve found! The queerest, most romantic old thing in the city; the most comfortable – and the cheapest! Here, is this the wardrobe key? To save time I’ll get your bonnet.”
“No, no, no!” cried the laughing wife, confronting him with sparkling eyes, and throwing herself before the wardrobe; “I can’t let you touch my bonnet!”
There is a limit, it seems, even to a wife’s subserviency.
However, in a very short time afterward, by the feminine measure, they were out in the street, and people were again smiling at the pretty pair to see her arm in his, and she actually keeping step. ’Twas very funny.
As they went John described his discovery: A pair of huge, solid green gates immediately on the sidewalk, in the dull façade of a tall, red brick building