You
could almost touch them, and it was little or no consolation to
reflect when they had seen you brushing your hair or fastening your
blouse, that these travellers in trains would never hear your name or
know who you were.
As for a bath--but then the great, magnificent advantage of living at
Mrs. McFarrell's was the bathroom. It was dark and small and smelled
of the black beetles who lived happily around the hot-water pipes. You
were not expected to take more than one bath a week, and for that one
bath towel was provided free.
"Oh, I thought you'd _had_ your bath this week!" was the answer Win
got on her second night, when mildly asking for a towel which had
disappeared. But if you were silly enough to pay thirty cents extra
for putting water on your body every day, you could do so. And, anyhow
a bathroom was a splendid advertisement. One lodger told another:
"The use of the bathroom is thrown in."
That night, when Win had bathed and laid herself carefully down in the
narrow bed which shook and groaned as if suffering from palsy, it
seemed more impossible than ever to go to sleep. Each new train that
rumbled by was a giant, homing bee, her brain the hive for which it
aimed.
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