Miriam Fry

Miriam Fry keeps the Griffith, a boarding house in New York for single women, and she keeps it by the rules. She interviews every prospective tenant herself, asks whatever she feels like asking, and hands over the house rules along with the key. No man goes upstairs. A tenant who breaks that one hears about it in front of everybody at breakfast and then packs. She is nosy about the hours her tenants keep and blunt about what she suspects, and a stranger who turns up at her desk with flowers can leave them there and go.