Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/352

 "I must find a room at once," she said. "I can't pay ten dollars a week board."

He mastered a tone of commonplace to reply: "I think there's one vacant in the house that I'm in—on the floor below me. That would be better than going to a strange place. I could look after you a little there. It shouldn't be more than three dollars. I get mine for two-fifty."

"Heated?"

"No-o. I heat it."

"Then you're paying too much. I was asking one of the women at the boarding-house."

"Mrs. McGahn said she was giving it to me for less than she would to anyone else."

"The old blarney! And you believed her. I think it's I that had better come and look after you a little."

"Do!"

She laughed. "What is Mrs. McGahn like?"

He described the house and its mistress, explained the arrangements he had made for his meals, and estimated the cost of them; and while he talked his eyes were fixed on the rosy promise of having her under his roof, and he smiled and smiled. When she agreed to call on Mrs. McGahn with him that evening to look at the vacant room, he accepted the future as already a thing accomplished. "Then when you're all settled," he said, "we can get to work in real earnest and see what we can find for you. It's always better to wait—not to accept the first thing that offers. Make a choice and take the best."

"To hear you, one would think I'd been besieged with offers."