Clyde hastened to cover his mistake. “Eight,” he called.
There being no one else on the elevator with them, the
Negro elevator boy in charge of the car saluted him at once.
“You’se new, ain’t you? I ain’t seen you around her befo’.”
“Yes, I just came on,” replied Clyde.
“Well, you won’t hate it here,” commented this youth in the
most friendly way. “No one hates this house, I’ll say. Eight
did you say?” He stopped the car and Clyde stepped out.
He was too nervous to think to ask the direction and now
began looking at room numbers, only to decide after a
moment that he was in the wrong corridor. The soft brown
carpet under his feet; the soft, cream-tinted walls; the snow-
white bowl lights in the ceiling—all seemed to him parts of a
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perfection and a social superiority wich was almost
unbelievable—so remote from all that he had ever known.
And finally, finding 882, he knocked timidly and was
greeted after a moment by a segment of a very stout and
vigorous body in a blue and white striped union suit and a
related segment of a round and florid head in which was set
one eye and some wrinkles to one side of it.
“Here’s a dollar bill, son,” said the eye seemingly—and now
a hand appeared holding a paper dollar. It was fat and red.
“You go out to a haberdasher’s and get me a pair of garters
—Boston Garters—silk—and hurry back.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde, and took the dollar. The door
closed and he found himself hustling along the hall toward
the elevator, wondering what a haberdasher’s was. As old
as he was—seventeen—the name was new to him. He had
never even heard it before, or noticed it at least. If the man
had said a “gents’ furnishing store,” he would have
understood at once, but now here he was told to go to a
haberdasher’s and he did not know what it was. A cold
sweat burst out upon his forehead. His knees trembled. The
devil! What would he do now? Could he ask any one, even
Hegglund, and not seem——
He pushed the elevator button. The car began to descend.
A haberdasher. A haberdasher. Suddenly a sane thought
reached him. Supposing he didn’t know what a
haberdasher was? After all the man wanted a pair of silk
Boston garters. Where did one get silk Boston garters—at a
store, of course, a place where they sold things for men.
Certainly. A gents’ furnishing store. He would run out to a
store. And on the way down, noting another friendly Negro
in charge, he asked: “Do you know if there’s a gents’
furnishing store anywhere around here?”
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“One in the building, captain, right outside the south lobby,”
replied the Negro, and Clyde hurried there, greatly relieved.
Yet he felt odd and strange in his close-fitting uniform and
his peculiar hat. All the time he was troubled by the notion
that his small, round, tight-fitting hat might fall off. And he
kept pressing it furtively and yet firmly down. And bustling
into the haberdasher’s, which was blazing with lights
outside, he exclaimed, “I want to get a pair of Boston silk
garters.”
“All right, son, here you are,” replied a sleek, short man with
bright, bald head, pink face and gold-rimmed glasses. “For
some one in the hotel, I presume? Well, we’ll make that
seventy-five cents, and here’s a dime for you,” he remarked
as he wrapped up the package and dropped the dollar in
the cash register. “I always like to do the right thing by you
boys in there because I know you come to me whenever
you can.”
Clyde took the dime and the package, not knowing quite
what to think. The garters must be seventy-five cents—he
said so. Hence only twenty-five cents need to be returned
to the man. Then the dime was his. And now, maybe—
would the man really give him another tip?
He hurried back into the hotel and up to the elevators. The
strains of a string orchestra somewhere were filling the
lobby with delightful sounds. People were moving here and
there—so well-dressed, so much at ease, so very different
from most of the people in the streets or anywhere, as he
caw it.
An elevator door flew open. Various guests entered. Then
Clyde and another bell-boy who gave him an interested
glance. At the sixth floor the boy departed. At the eighth
Clyde and an old lady stepped forth. He hurried to the door
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of his guest and tapped. The man opened it, somewhat
more fully dressed than before. He had on a pair of trousers
and was shaving.
“Back, eh,” he called.
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde, handing him the package and
change. “He said it was seventy-five cents.”
“He’s a damned robber, but you can keep the change, just
the same,” he replied, handing him the quarter and closing
the door. Clyde stood there, quite spellbound for the
fraction of a second. “Thirty-five cents”—he thought—“thirty-
five cents.” And for one little short errand. Could that really
be the way things went here? It couldn’t be, really. It wasn’t
possible—not always.
And then, his feet sinking in the soft nap of the carpet, his
hand in one pocket clutching the money, he felt as if he
could squeal or laugh out loud. Why, thirty-five cents—and
for a little service like that. This man had given him a
quarter and the other a dime and he hadn’t done anything
at all.
He hurried from the car at the bottom—the strains of the
orchestra once more fascinated him, the wonder of so well-
dressed a throng thrilling him—and made his way to the
bench from which he had first departed.
And following this he had been called to carry the three
bags and two umbrellas of an aged farmer-like couple, who
had engaged a parlor, bedroom and bath on the fifth floor.
En route they kept looking at him, as he could see, but said
nothing. Yet once in their room, and after he had promptly
turned on the lights near the door, lowered the blinds and
placed the bags upon the bag racks, the middle-aged and
rather awkward husband—a decidedly solemn and
bewhiskered person—studied him and finally observed:
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“Young fella, you seem to be a nice, brisk sort of boy—
rather better than most we’ve seen so far, I must say.”
“I certainly don’t think that hotels are any place for boys,”
chirped up the wife of his bosom—a large and rotund
person, who by this time was busily employed inspecting an
adjoining room. “I certainly wouldn’t want any of my boys to
work in ’em—the way people act.”
“But here, young man,” went on the elder, laying off
hisovercoat and fishing in his trousers pocket. “You go
down and get me three or four evening papers if there are
that many and a pitcher of ice-water, and I’ll give you fifteen
cents when you get back.”
“This hotel’s better’n the one in Omaha, Pa,” added the wife
sententiously. “It’s got nicer carpets and curtains.”
And as green as Clyde was, he could not help smiling
secretly. Openly, however, he preserved a masklike
solemnity, seemingly effacing all facial evidence of thought,
and took the change and went out. And in a few moments
he was back with the ice-water and all the evening papers
and de parted smilingly with his fifteen cents.
But this, in itself, was but a beginning in so far as this
particular evening was concerned, for he was scarcely
seated upon the bench again, before he was called to room
529, only to be sent to the bar for drinks—two ginger ales
and two syphons of soda—and this by a group of smartly-
dressed young men and girls who were laughing and
chattering in the room, one of whom opened the door just
wide enough to instruct him as to what was wanted. But
because of a mirror over the mantel, he could see the party
and one pretty girl in a white suit and cap, sitting on the
edge of a chair in which reclined a young man who had his
arm about her.
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Clyde stared, even while pretending not to. And in his state
of mind, this sight was like looking through the gates of
Paradise. Here were young fellows and girls in this room,
not so much older than himself, laughing and talking and
drinking even—not ice-cream sodas and the like, but such
drinks no doubt as his mother and father were always
speaking against as leading to destruction, and apparently
nothing was thought of it.
He bustled down to the bar, and having secured the drinks
and a charge slip, returned—and was paid—a dollar and a
half for the drinks and a quarter for himself. And once more