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A GIRL of nineteen had just arrived in New York, with one fat bag. She turned into the curving silence of Harrow Street, which is only three minutes’ walk from Washington Square, but some trick to find. Several times she changed her bag from one hand to the other, sometimes putting it down and stepping around it, until she came to a door with a room-to-rent sign. This house was painted fresh green, the only thing that distinguished it from all the other houses of the block, except the number, which was Fifty-four. “Here goes me!” she said, starting up the stone steps. She rang. The door before her didn’t open, but the basement door below did. A woman’s voice called, “Yes?” in rising inflection. The girl trailed her bag down to the walk and around the railing to the lower entrance where a dark-faced woman stood, regarding her with almost concerned[2] attention—dark eyes that saw too much, the girl decided. The face was un-American, but its foreign suggestion was vague. It might even have been East Indian. If her skin was natively white, it had certainly known the darkening of much sunlight. As the girl drew near she sensed a curious freshness from the woman; something hard to name, having to do with the garments as well as the shadowy olive skin. “I want to rent a room—a small back room. I saw your sign on the door.” “I have a room, but it hasn’t much air,” the woman said. “I don’t need much air——” “Come and we’ll look. It is on the upper floor, but it is not quite back. Leave your bag here in the hall.” It was eleven in the morning, but the smell of coffee was in the dark basement corridor, and laughing voices were heard behind the shut door to the right. A man’s voice said in a stimulated tone: “Believe me, and I’ve been around, Miss Claes is the deepest-dyed sport I’ve ever met. You could drag her the length of Harrow Street and she’d come up fresh from the laundry——” “That reminds me, I’m going to start a laundry,” a woman’s voice announced. “I’m going to start something myself——” came another voice. The girl, following through the corridor, heard a little breathless sort of chuckle from the woman ahead[3] of her on the dark stairs. The place smelled like a shut room when it rains—a cigaretty admixture. They climbed. The next hall was spooky with gaslight; the next was gay with frying sausages. They climbed. The next was the one, and it smelled of paint—the same green paint as on the outside of the house—on one of the doors and doorframes, but the wood was plainly charred under the paint. “We had a fire, but we put it out with wash water before the engines got here, soapy water.” The girl had a picture of threshing soap about in pails of water before applying it to the flames. “This is the one,” the woman said, unlocking the next to last room from the back on the left. “All the rest are filled just now. Most of my lodgers never leave, only as they strike it rich——” “Do they often strike it rich?” “Oh, yes, dear. New York is quite the most magic place in America—something for every one who comes, if he only stays on.” They had crowded into the little room. “This is fine,” the girl said. “This is what I want. It’s just as I saw it.” “You get your water in the hall below,” the woman explained. “There is no gas plate, so you will have to bring your coffeepot down to my stove in the basement. The walls are ugly, but I’ll see that the cot is clean for you. If the wall of the next house across the area were only painted white, you would get more light.” [4]The wall spoken of was less than three feet from the window sill. “What is the price?” the girl asked, with a cough before and after. “Twelve dollars a month.” “I will pay for a month now,” she said, with a small part of a big out-breath. “When did you come to New York?” the woman asked. “This morning.” “First time?” “Yes. From Los Angeles.” “And you have had four nights on the train?” “Six. It was a slow tourist train. I sat up from Chicago——” “Have you lived in Los Angeles long?” “Always—in and around.” “We don’t dare to think of Los Angeles much. To a lot of us here in New York, it’s a kind of heaven. Southern California—the sea and the mountains and the ten months of sunlight and the cool morning fogs and the ripe figs——” “I’ve wanted New York like that,” the girl said. “I’ve wanted New York so badly that I was afraid on the train that it wouldn’t stay until I got here——” “That’s the way to come,” the landlady said. “New York would wait for you. Oh, yes, New York waits for your kind. What are you going to do here?” “Write.” “Really?” [5]The woman sat down on the edge of the cot. Her interest did not seem an affectation. Her figure was thin but lithe. One wouldn’t know in these shadows if she were nearer twenty-five or thirty-five. She seemed altogether without haste, smiling easily, but slow to laugh aloud. Her eyes looked startlingly knowing as she lit a cigarette—not natural somehow. At the same time in the matchlight her face had looked tired and weathered. Her way of speaking was like an English person, or one educated in England.