Tom was unselfishly enthusiastic over the scheme, though he said he dared not think of his loneliness if they left the "Blackboard." But Bab hospitably gave him the freedom of the new apartment, and before they separated for the night the place was rented, furnished, and they had moved in. And, best of all, Tom had promised Phyllis a kitten.
Jessamy and Barbara were ready for their expedition in search of peace by nine o'clock the next morning. Phyllis had solemnly promised to prepare for herself and her aunt alternate cups of beef-tea and malted milk for every two hours of their absence, a task to which she protested she was quite equal, especially as she would be sustained by the remembrance of the errand on which they were bound. If they were detained over lunch-hour, the willing but overworked maid was engaged to serve them, a provision for possibilities suggested by Phyllis, who realized that Harlem was a long distance away and flat-seeking consuming of time.
"Phyllis is rather like the centurion in the gospel: she tells one to go, and she goeth, and another to do this, and she doeth it. That isn't irreverent, because the centurion was only a Roman soldier, not even a prophet," said Bab, as she and Jessamy toiled up the elevated-road steps at Thirty-third Street. "I wonder what it is about Phyl that we all yield to?"
"She is very decided, with all her quiet manner, for one thing," said Jessamy; "and we have learned that she is generally right, and pulls us out of difficulties for another. Wait till I get up, Bab; I think I've two tickets."
"What does it matter? Keep them; we shall need them when we've moved up town," said Bab, airily, as she dashed ahead and deposited ten cents at the ticket-seller's window.
They had a list of apartments to rent, cut from the paper, and they decided, after consulting it, to make One Hundred and Fourth Street what Bab called "their distributing-point," whence they would scatter themselves impartially over the neighborhood.
It is not wholly an attractive section of the city; Jessamy and Bab felt their ardor somewhat dampened after they had rung several janitors' bells, in uniformly small vestibules decorated with stencil-work on the ceilings and walls, and with little brass speaking-tubes, and electric bells, and, in many cases, with several small children munching cookies and staring, round-eyed, at the strangers. The apartments they were shown were not what they had dreamed of the previous night. They were tiny, with chambers "just about large enough to iron a pocket handkerchief on the floor," said Jessamy, forlornly.