"No, I'll be careful."
Hubert and Lillian spent the night on the couch with their heads pillowed upon the small, cretonne-covered cushions. They weren't bad little cushions but you got a stiff neck from trying to stay up on them.
The next day Lillian found that a precedent had been successfully established. The Sullivans had spent the night in her apartment and believed that it could be done again. Lillian knew well that it could be done again. She had never learned how to refuse. It seemed that Anna's mother hadn't room for both Anna and Cliff and they couldn't bear to be separated. A hotel was out of the question, as the Sullivan funds were low, and it would be Sunday before Anna would get a chance to hunt for an apartment.
"Certainly," said Lillian. "Stay as long as you like." The poor kids. After all, they did have to have some place to go.
Anna was generous about it, however. It was she who insisted that the couch would do perfectly well for herself and Cliff and that Lillian and Hubert must take the bed. Lillian appreciated her thoughtfulness. She went out and bought two real bed pillows for the couch and another blanket. She and Hubert had been a bit chilly.
On Sunday Anna and Lillian found the apartment on Nagle Avenue. It was forty-five dollars a month. Anna couldn't go a cent over forty; so she stood in the center of the sunny living-room and cried a little bit. This was just what she wanted, but oh, she couldn't manage it. Forty dollars was absolutely her outside price.
