Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/71

 something very like a groan; for Miss Imboden was hungry.

The bald statement, as she repeated it to herself, was as convincing as the landlady's remarks had been half an hour before, when that stout person had toiled up the stairs for a few moments of serious converse with her young lodger. She had informed Miss Imboden that she herself was honored in the neighborhood as a woman who paid her bills promptly, and she had then solicitously inquired how she could be expected to maintain that enviable reputation unless her lodgers paid her. The questions embarrassed the young woman on the top floor, back. Miss Imboden admitted that she had not paid her room rent for five weeks. She went further, and recklessly stated that there were no present indications of her being able to pay it for five weeks to come. Whereupon the interview had concluded rather unpleasantly, with Mrs. Smith's concise request for the key and the room "as early Monday morning as you can make it convenient, if you please."

Miss Imboden was not, as a rule, easily