However, she recalled the humble appearance and mode of speech of her friend the drug clerk and plucked up the courage to ascend and to ring.
A slattern, colored maid opened the door.

At the first glance within, at the first whiff of the interior air, Susan felt more at ease.

For she was seeing what even her bedazzled eyes recognized as cheap dowdiness, and the smell that assailed her nostrils was that of a house badly and poorly kept--the smell of cheap food and bad butter cooking, of cats, of undusted rooms, of various unrecognizable kinds of staleness.

She stood in the center of the big dingy parlor, gazing round at the grimed chromos until Mrs.Wylie entered--a thin middle-aged woman with small brown eyes set wide apart, a perpetual frown, and a chin so long and so projected that she was almost jimber-jawed.

While Susan explained stammeringly what she had come for, Mrs.Wylie eyed her with increasing disfavor.