“I’ve just arrived from Montreal.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed, “you _must_ be tired!” She seemed to think
Montreal was as far away as Siberia.
She showed me up three flights of stairs to a tiny room in which was a
folding bed. As I had never seen a folding bed before, she opened it up
and showed me how it worked. When it was down there was scarcely an inch
of room left and I had to put the one chair out into the hall.
She explained that it would be much better for me to have a folding bed,
because when it was up I could use the room as a sitting-room and see my
company there. I told her I did not expect any company as I was a
perfect stranger in Boston. She laughed--that queer little bird-like
laugh I had heard behind the curtain, and said:
“I’ll take a bet you’ll have all the company this room will hold soon.”
There was something kindly about her tired face and when I asked her if
I had to pay in advance--the room was three dollars a week--she
hesitated, and then said:
“Well, it’s the custom, but you can suit yourself. There’s no hurry.”
I sometimes think that nearly every one in the world has a story, and,
if we only knew it, those nearest to us might surprise us with a history
or romance of which we never dreamed. Take my little faded landlady. She
was the last person in the world one would have imagined the heroine of
a real romance, but perhaps her romance was too pitiful and tiny to be
worth the telling. Nevertheless, when I heard it--from another lodger in
the house--I felt drawn to poor Miss Darling. To the world she might
seem a withered old maid. I knew she was capable of a great and
unselfish passion.
She had come from Vermont to Boston, and had worked as a cashier in a
down-town restaurant. She had slowly saved her money until she had a
sufficient sum with which to buy this rooming-house, which I sometimes
thought was as sad and faded as she.
While she was working so hard, she had fallen in love with a young
medical student. He had even less money than Miss Darling. When she
opened her rooming-house she took him in, and for three years she gave
him rent free and supported him entirely, even buying his medical books,
paying his tuition, his clothes and giving him pocket money. He had
promised to marry her as soon as he passed, but within a few days after
he became a doctor he married a wealthy girl who lived in Brookline and
on whom he had been calling all the time he had been living with Miss
Darling.
The lodger who told me about her said she never said a word to any one
about it, but just began to fade away. She lost thirty pounds in a
single month, but she was the “pluckiest little sport ever,” said the
lodger.
It seemed to me our stories were not unlike, and I wondered to myself
whether Reggie was capable of being as base as was Miss Darling’s
lover.
While I was taking my things out of my suitcase, Miss Darling watched me
with a rather curious expression, and suddenly she said:
“I don’t know what you intend to do, but take my advice. Don’t be too
easy. If I were as young and pretty as you, I tell you, I would make
every son of a gun pay me well.”