soothingly.

They were in the elevator that was taking them up to the fourth and
(according to Pinky) choicest apartment. The building was what is known
as a studio apartment, in the West Sixties. The corridors were done in
red flagstones, with gray-tone walls. The metal doors were painted gray.

Pinky was snickering. "Now she'll say: 'Well, _we've_ been very
comfortable here.' They always do. Don't look too eager."

"No fear," put in Hosey Brewster.

"It's really lovely. And a real fireplace. Everything new and good.
She's asking two hundred and twenty-five. Offer her one seventy-five.
She'll take two hundred."

"You bet she will," growled Hosea.

She answered the door--hatted; hatted in henna, that being the season's
chosen colour. A small, dark foyer, overcrowded with furniture; a studio
living room, bright, high-ceilinged, smallish; one entire side was
window. There were Japanese prints, and a baby grand piano, and a lot of
tables, and a davenport placed the way they do it on the stage, with its
back to the room and its arms to the fireplace, and a long table just
behind it, with a lamp on it, and books, and a dull jar thing, just as
you've see it in the second-act library.

Hosea Brewster twisted his head around and up to gaze at the lofty
ceiling. "Feel's if I was standing at the bottom of a well," he
remarked.