New Bed-Time Stories

It had been such a weary hunt for lodgings. Not that lodgings are scarce in London. There are scores of streets, whole districts, indeed, where the house that did not say “Apartments” in its window would be the exception.

But Miss Endell wanted to combine a great deal. She must be economical, for her funds were running low; she must be near the British Museum, for she wanted to consult many authorities for the book about “Noted Irishwomen,” by which she hoped to retrieve her fortunes; she wanted quiet, too, and reasonably pretty things about her.

For a week she had spent most of her time in quest of the place where she could settle herself comfortably for a few months. It was the gray March weather. The mornings were dark, and the gloom of coming dusk settled down early; and, during all the hours between, Miss Endell had been busy in that weary work of which Dante speaks, “climbing the stairs of others.”

At last, after much consideration, she had decided to make a certain flight of stairs her own. She had taken the drawing-room floor of No. 30 Guilford Street; and with a comfortable feeling of success she had paid her bill at the Charing Cross Hotel, and driven to her new home.

The drawing-room floor—that is to say, the suite of rooms up one flight of stairs from the street—is the most important part of a London lodging-house. Whoever is kept waiting, when “the drawing-room”—as it is the fashion to designate the lodger who occupies that apartment—rings, the ring must at once be “answered to.” That floor rents for as much as all the rest of the house put together, and is the chief dependence of anxious landladies.

Miss Endell, accordingly, was received as a person of importance. Her boxes were brought upstairs, and her landlady, Mrs. Stone, bustled about cheerfully, helping her to arrange things.

At last every thing was comfortably placed, and the tired new-comer settled herself in a low chair in front of the glowing coal-fire, and glanced around her.

Mrs. Stone was still busy, wiping away imperceptible dust. The door was open, and in the doorway was framed a singular face, that of a pale, slender child, with a figure that looked too tall for the face, and great eager eyes, with such a wistful, silent longing in them as Miss Endell had never seen before.