"It will only be for a little while, Millie," whispered her father.

The young girl shrank and shivered even in the summer morning at
the ordeal of crowded life, with only intervening doorways and thin
partitions between them and all sorts of unknown neighbors.

"Suppose, papa, we look at the other rooms of which you have the
refusal," she faltered.

Even in his false buoyancy he could not suppress a sigh as he saw
that Mildred, in spite of her determination to make the best of
everything, had not imagined what a tenement-house was. "We will
be back in an hour or more," he whispered to the janitor, for he
believed the other rooms would appear still more repulsive.

And so they did, for when Mildred had climbed up three stairways
in a five-story, narrow house, which even at that hour was filled
with a babel of sounds, the old mansion seemed a refuge, and
when she had glanced around the narrow room and two dark closets
of bedrooms, she shuddered and said, "Papa, can we really afford
nothing better?"

"Honestly, Millie, we cannot for the present. My income is exceedingly
small, although it will soon be increased, no doubt. But if we
pay too much for rooms we shall have nothing to live upon while
waiting for better times. These rooms are fourteen dollars a month.
Those in the old mansion are only eight, and the two rooms there
give more chance for comfort than do these three."