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Father Brewster, on hearing the price, emitted a long low whistle and said: “How many rooms did you say?”

Two—and a kitchenette, of course. ”

“Well, then, all I can say is the furniture ought to be solid gold for that; inlaid with rubies and picked out with platinum. ”

But it wasn’t. In fact, it wasn’t solid anything, being mostly of a very impermanent structure and style. Pinky explained that she had kept the best for the last. The thing that worried Father Brewster was that, no matter at what hour of the day they might happen to call on the prospective lessor, that person was always feminine and hatted. Once it was eleven in the morning. Once five in the afternoon.

“Do these New York women wear hats in the house all the time?” demanded Hosea Brewster worriedly. “I think they sleep in ’em. It’s a wonder they ain’t bald. Maybe they are. Maybe that’s why. Anyway, it makes you feel like a book agent. ”

He sounded excited and tired. “Now, father!” said Mrs. Brewster, soothingly.

They were in the elevator that was taking them up to the fourth and (according to Pinky) choicest apartment. The building was what is known as a studio apartment, in the West Sixties. The corridors were done in red flagstones, with grey-tone walls. The metal doors were painted grey.

Pinky was snickering. “Now she’ll say: ‘Well, we’ve been very comfortable here.’ They always do. Don’t look too eager. ”

“No fear,” put in Hosey Brewster.

“It’s really lovely. And a real fireplace. Everything new and good. She’s asking two hundred and twenty-five. Offer her one seventy-five. She’ll take two hundred”

“You bet she will,” growled Hosea.

She answered the door—hatted; hatted in henna, that being the season’s chosen colour. A small dark foyer, overcrowded with furniture; a studio living-room, bright, high-ceilinged, smallish; one entire side was window. There were Japanese prints, and a baby grand piano, and a lot of tables, and a davenport placed the way they do it on the stage, with its back to the room and its arms to the fireplace, and a long table just behind it, with a lamp on it, and books, and a dull jar thing, just as you’ve seen it in the second-act library.

Hosea Brewster twisted his head around and up to gaze at the lofty ceiling. “Feel’s if I was standing at the bottom of a well,” he remarked.

But the hatted one did not hear him. “No; no dining-room,” she was saying briskly. “No, indeed. I always use this gate-legged table. You see? It pulls out like this. You can easily seat six—eight, in fact. ”

“Heaven forbid!” in ferventsotto vocefrom Father Brewster.

“It’s an enormous saving in time and labour. ”

“The—kitchen!” inquired Mrs. Brewster.

The hat waxed playful. “You’ll never guess where the kitchen is!” She skipped across the room. “You see this screen?” They saw it. A really handsome affair, and so placed at one end of the room that it looked a part of it. “Come here. ” They came. The reverse side of the screen was dotted with hooks, and on each hook hung a pot, a pan, a ladle, a spoon. And there was the tiny gas range, the infinitesimal ice chest, the miniature sink. The whole would have been lost in one corner of the Brewster’s Winnebago china closet.

“Why, how—how wonderful!” breathed Mrs. Brewster.

“Isn’t it? So complete—and so convenient. I’ve cooked roasts, steaks, chops, everything, right here. It’s just play. ”

A terrible fear seized upon Father Brewster. He eyed the sink and the tiny range with a suspicious eye. “The beds,” he demanded, “where are the beds?”

She opened the little oven door and his heart sank. But, “They’re upstairs,” she said. “This is a duplex, you know. ”