A girl came, and he asked her, with a flushed face, if Miss Amanda
Grier boarded there; somehow he could not bear to ask for Miss
Dudley.
"Well," the girl said, "she _rooms_ here," as if that might be
a different thing to Lemuel altogether.
"Oh!" he said. "Is she in?"
"Well, you can walk in," said the girl, "and I'll see." She came
back to ask, "Who shall I say called?"
"Mr. Barker," said Lemuel, and then glowed with shame because he had
called himself Mister. The girl did not come back, but she hardly
seemed gone before 'Manda Grier came into the room. He did not know
whether she would speak to him, but she was as pleasant as could be,
and said he must come right up to her and S'tira's room. It was
pretty high up, but he did not notice the stairs, 'Manda Grier kept
talking so; and when he got to it, and 'Manda Grier dashed the door
open, and told him to walk right in, he would not have known but he
was in somebody's sitting-room. A curtained alcove hid the bed, and
the room was heated by a cheerful little kerosene stove; there were
bright folding carpet-chairs, and the lid of the washstand had a
cloth on it that came down to the floor, and there were plants in
the window. There was a mirror on the wall, framed in black walnut
with gilt moulding inside, and a family-group photograph in the same
kind of frame, and two chromes, and a clock on a bracket.
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