The old woman turned a little, so that she could look at him.
"It's a handsome young fellow you are," she went on; "there's more than one house in town where they'd take you in on your looks--and tuck you up in bed, too, and keep you warm."
"Perhaps I'm better off here," he remarked, feeling that he was expected to say something.
"This isn't a bad hotel of ours, this isn't," she returned; "it's well ventilated, for one thing. Of course you can go to the station-house if you want. I don't. I've tried it, and I'd sooner sleep in the snow than in the station-house, with the creatures you meet there. This hotel of ours here keeps open all night; and it's on the European plan, I'm thinking--leastwise you can have anything you can pay for. When the owl-wagon is here, you can get a late supper--if you have the price of it. I haven't."
"Then there's two of us ready for an invite to breakfast," she responded, cheerily. "If any one asks us, it's no previous engagement will make us decline, I'm thinking."
He made no answer, for his heart sank as he looked into the future.
"So am I," she replied, "and I can't get used to it. Hunger is like pain, isn't it? It don't let go of you; it don't get tired and let up on you. It's a stayer, that's what it is, and it keeps right on attending strictly to business. Sometimes, when I'm very hungry, I feel like committing suicide, don't you?"
"No," he responded--"at least, not yet; I haven't had enough of life to be tired of it so soon."
"Neither have I," was her answer. "Sometimes I'm ready to quit, but somehow I don't do it. But it would be so easy; you throw yourself in front of one of those cable-cars coming down Broadway now--and you'll get rapid transit to kingdom come. But they don't sell excursion tickets. Besides, being crunched by a cable-car is a dreadful mussy way of dying, don't you think? And to-day's Friday, too--and I don't believe I'd ever have any luck in the next world if I was to commit suicide on a Friday."
"This isn't Friday any longer," he suggested; "it's Saturday morning."
"So it is now," she rejoined; "then we'd better be getting our beauty-sleep as soon as we can, for the flower-market here will wake us up soon enough, seeing it's Saturday. And so, good-night to you!"