I’m sure if you went to him and told him that you wanted it, he’d let you have it.”
“No, he wouldn’t!” said Mrs. Buckles bitterly. “I’ve been to him—I’ve asked him. He paid no attention to me—tried to tell me I was better off where I was, that it was a better room, a better bargain!—Here I’ve been living at this place for eight years now, but do you think they show me any consideration? No,” she cried bitterly, “they’re all alike nowadays—out for everything they can get—it’s grab, grab, grab—and they don’t care who you are or how long they’ve known you—if they can get five cents more from someone else, why, out you go!… When I came back here from Florida last spring I found my old room taken…. I went to Mr. Betts a dozen times and asked to have it back and he always put me off—told me there were some people in there who were leaving soon and I could have it just as soon as they moved out…. That was all a put-up job,” she said resentfully. “He didn’t mean a word of it. I see now that he never had any intention of giving me my old room…. No! They’ve just found that they can get a dollar or two more a week for it from these fly-by-nights than I could afford to pay—and so, of course, I’m the one that gets turned out!” she said. “That’s the way it goes nowadays!”
“Well,” said Mrs. Martin a trifle acidly, “I’m sure if you went to Mr. Betts in the right way you could get your old room back. He’s always done everything I ever asked him to do for me. But, of course,” she said pointedly, “you’ve got to approach him in the right way.”
“Oh-h!” said old Mrs. Grey rapturously, “I think Mr. Betts is the nicest manager they’ve ever had here—so pleasant, so good-natured! so willing to oblige! Now that other man they had here before he came—what was his name?” she said impatiently. “—Mason, or Watson, or Clarkson—something like that—”
“Wilson,” said Doctor Withers.
“—Oh, yes—Wilson!” said Mrs. Grey. “That’s it—Wilson! I never liked him at all,” she said with an accent of scornful depreciation. “You could never get anything out of Wilson. He never did anything you wanted him to do. But Mr. Betts!—oh-h! I think Mr. Betts is a lovely manager!”
“Well, I haven’t found him so,” said Mrs. Buckles grimly. “I liked Wilson better.”
“Oh, I don’t agree with you, Mrs. Buckles,” Mrs. Grey said with a stony
