Who would not be glad, overjoyed, indeed, to get away
from such an environment?
He found the number. The house was no worse and no better than its
neighbors. By stains on the blistered bricks beside the door frame
he gathered that scraps of paper advertising empty rooms had often
been pasted there. He rang the bell at the top of the rail-guarded
steps. After a time he rang again.
He could hear the bell jangle somewhere in a distant part of the
house. Nobody came in answer to his summons, not even after his
third ring. At length the creaking, iron-barred gate in the area
warned him that the main door at which he rang was not in use at
that hour of the day. A woman in a house dress as ugly as the street
itself, and with untidy gray hair and a bar of smut on her cheek,
craned her neck from this opening to look up at him.
"There's no use your ringing. I ain't got an empty room, young man,"
she announced.
He descended spryly into the area before she could close the gate.
Her near-sighted scowl misjudged him again, for she added:
"Nor I don't want to buy anything."
"One moment, ma'am," he cried. "I have nothing for sale. I'd like to
see somebody who lodges here."
"Who?" asked the woman, peering at him curiously.
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