'Orkup stays,' said the pantomime dame. Which Mike interpreted to mean,
would he walk upstairs?

The procession moved up a dark flight of stairs until it came to a
door. The pantomime dame opened this, and shuffled through. Mike stood
in the doorway, and looked in.

It was a repulsive room. One of those characterless rooms which are
only found in furnished apartments. To Mike, used to the comforts of
his bedroom at home and the cheerful simplicity of a school dormitory,
it seemed about the most dismal spot he had ever struck. A sort of
Sargasso Sea among bedrooms.

He looked round in silence. Then he said: 'Yes.' There did not seem
much else to say.

'It's a nice room,' said the pantomime dame. Which was a black lie. It
was not a nice room. It never had been a nice room. And it did not seem
at all probable that it ever would be a nice room. But it looked cheap.
That was the great thing. Nobody could have the assurance to charge
much for a room like that. A landlady with a conscience might even have
gone to the length of paying people some small sum by way of
compensation to them for sleeping in it.

'About what?' queried Mike. Cheapness was the great consideration. He
understood that his salary at the bank would be about four pounds ten a
month, to begin with, and his father was allowing him five pounds a
month. One does not do things _en prince_ on a hundred and
fourteen pounds a year.