We return to Phil.
“Foller me, boy!” said Mr. Tucker, as he entered the house, and proceeded to ascend the front steps.
Philip had formed his plans, and without a word of remonstrance, he obeyed. The whole interior was dingy and dirty. Mrs. Tucker was not a neat woman, and everything looked neglected and slipshod.
In the common room, to the right, the door of which was partly open, Philip saw some old men and women sitting motionless, in a sort of weary patience. They were “paupers,” and dependent for comfort on the worthy couple, who regarded them merely as human machines, good to them for sixty cents a week each.
Mr. Tucker did not stop at the first landing, but turned and began to ascend a narrower and steeper staircase leading to the next story.
This was, if anything, dirtier and more squalid than the first and second. There were several small rooms on the third floor, into one of which Mr. Tucker pushed his way. “Come in,” he said. “Now you’re at home. This is goin’ to be your room.”
Philip looked around him in disgust, which he did not even take the trouble to conceal.
There was a cot-bed in the corner, with an unsavory heap of bed-clothing upon it, and a couple of chairs, both with wooden seats, and one with the back gone.
That was about all the furniture. There was one window looking out upon the front.
“So this is to be my room, is it?” asked our hero.
“Yes. How do you like it?”
“I don’t see any wash-stand, or any chance to wash.”
“Come, that’s rich!” said Mr. Tucker, appearing to be very much amused. “You didn’t think you was stoppin’ in the Fifth Avenoo Hotel, did you?”
“This don’t look like it.”
“We ain’t used to fashionable boarders, and we don’t know how to take care of ’em. You’ll have to go downstairs and wash in the trough, like the rest of the paupers do.”
“And wipe my face on the grass, I suppose?” said Philip coolly, though his heart sank within him at the thought of staying even one night in a place so squalid and filthy.
“Come, that’s goin’ too far,” said Mr. Tucker, who felt that the reputation of the boarding-house was endangered by such insinuations. “We mean to live respectable. There’s two towels a week allowed, and that I consider liberal.”
“And do all your boarders use the same towel?” asked Phil, unable to suppress an expression of disgust.
“Sartain. You don’t think we allow ’em one apiece, do you!”
“No, I don’t,” said Philip decidedly.
He had ceased to expect anything so civilized in Mr. Tucker’s establishment.
“Now you’re safe in your room, I reckon I’d better go downstairs,” said Tucker.
“I will go with you.”
“Not much you won’t! We ain’t a-goin’ to give you a chance of runnin’ away just yet!”
“Do you mean to keep me a prisoner?” demanded Philip.
“That’s just what we do, at present,” answered his genial host.
“It won’t be for long, Mr. Tucker.”
“What’s that you say? I’m master here, I’d have you to know!”
Just then a shrill voice was heard from below:
“Come down, Joe Tucker! Are you goin’ to stay upstairs all day?”
“Comin’, Abigail!” answered Mr. Tucker hastily, as he backed out of the room, locking the door behind him. Philip heard the click of the key as it turned in the lock, and he realized, for the first time in his life, that he was a prisoner.
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