About this story
Sappho keeps her past locked in a dispatch box and gives only a typist's occupation, which unsettles your fiance John Langley more than good manners allow. By midnight he is at your door with a hotel register proving she has used another name, demanding you turn her out, but Sappho's room is already empty, and she has left before the last train.
How it opens
Ma Smith's lodging house held family history behind every polished Boston door.
Ma SmithDora, the new tenant asked for the sunny room and a table for her typewriter.
You changed the linen while your brother Will carried coal past the open doorway.
Will SmithA working woman will value heat before whatever prophecy Dora is arranging.
I predict only that you will forget the coal once Miss Clark enters.
Choose
I will show her the room before the household turns her into a romance.
Will may carry her case while I bring the register.