Then--oh, then--if you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand
clutching the three moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely
proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs.
Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word "Clara," she
would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured
maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth
flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7x8 feet of floor
space at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber
closet or storeroom.

In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser.
Its four bare walls seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a
coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as
from a well--and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little
skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.

"Two dollars, suh," Clara would say in her half-contemptuous,
half-Tuskegeenial tones.

One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter
made to be lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little
girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped
and that always looked as if they were saying: "Goodness me! Why didn't
you keep up with us?"

Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlours. "In this closet," she said,
"one could keep a skeleton or anaesthetic or coal--"

"But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist," said Miss Leeson, with a
shiver.