"Well, it was a handsome house an' elegant things in the parlors an' bedrooms, but my heart sunk when she took me into the kitchen. The last girl had gone off in a rage an' left everything, an' there was grease and dirt from floor to ceiling. It was a deep basement, with one window an' a door opening right into the area with glass set in it, an' iron bars to both; but dirty to that degree you couldn't see three feet beyond; cockroaches walking round at their ease an' water-bugs so thick you didn't know where to lay anything.
"'You'll have things quite your own way,' the lady said, 'for I never come into the kitchen. Bridget attends to upstairs, but you attend to fires and the meals and washing and ironing, and I expect punctuality and everything well done.'
"'At least it sounds independent,' I thought, and I made up my mind to try it, for the wages were fifteen dollars a month, an' that with board seemed doing well. Bridget came down presently. She was seventeen an' a pretty girl rather, but she looked fit to drop, an' fell down in a chair.
"'It's the bell,' she said. 'The comin' an' goin' here niver ceases, an' whin 'tisn't the front door it's her own bell, an' she'll jingle it or holler up the tube in the middle o' the night if she takes a notion.'
"I wouldn't ask questions, for I thought I should find out soon enough, so I said I'd like to go up to my room a minute.
"'It's our room you'll mane,' she said. 'There's but the one, an' it's hard enough for two to be slapin' on a bed that's barely the width o' one.'
"My heart sank then, for I'd always had a place that was comfortable all my life, but it sunk deeper when I went up there. A hall bedroom, with a single bed an' a small table, with a washbowl an' small pitcher, one chair an' some nails in the door for hanging things; that was all except a torn shade at the window. I looked at the bed. The two ragged comfortables were foul with long use. I thought of my nice bed down at Spring Street, my own good sheets an' blankets an' all, an' I began to cry.
"'You don't look as if you was used to the likes of it,' Bridget said. 'There's another room the same as this but betther. Why not ax for it?'
"I started down the stairs an' came right upon Mrs. Melrose, who smiled as if she thought I had been enjoying myself.