Whereupon the gentlemen looked at the bill like it was some kind of
curiosity, then looked at each other and groaned, and then gave the
givers a look that scared them to a pope’s purple and made them finger
further with the purse-string until the gentlemen had grunted their
approval and departed.
When they arrived at their hotel they found they had only a couple of
hundred dollars to pay the taxi fare with, but they managed to get by
with it without inciting any murderous thought in the breast of the
driver, and went in and registered.
When they informed the Room Clerk that they had not made any
reservations he said he was sorry but everything was taken except one
room without bath adjoining the boiler-house which was being held for
a certain gentleman who had wired for it several months ago. Then King
Klerk tapped his fingers on the desk and looked boredly out beyond
their square heads and repeated that he was sorry.
At this, Mr. and Mrs. Typ got down on their knees and said the Litany,
and the room clerk thawed and told them they could have the room for
$20 a day if they barked quick. They barked. They also thanked him
from the bottom of their grateful American hearts and told him whenever
he came to their town to look them up.
When they had squeezed into their little ingrowing room they found that
it had only one window, and that was an opening in the ceiling about
the size of a silver dollar, but fifty times the value. They also found
the porters hanging around for a tip and forgot that it was the custom
at home to fee the beetles a quarter every time they did something
instead of giving the whole bunch a couple of shillings at the end of a
week’s work. They apologized for this oversight and then settled down
for a little rest.
The temperature of the room was between 300 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit
and Mr. Typ began to sweat like a brewery horse and got up to pull off
his coat, but found the room was too cramped to do it and so he took
off his necktie instead.
About the time that their eyes were beginning to hang out on their
cheek-bones with the heat, and their ears were ringing like a Broadway
New Year’s eve celebration, they managed to throw off the approaching
comatose and back out of the room and down to the restaurant for lunch.
The head waiter said all the tables were full but if they didn’t mind
sitting outside for a couple of weeks he would see what he could do.
They said “Oh-that’s-all-right” and thanked him very kindly and gave
him a Dollar Bill and sat down outside the door and tried to look as if
they didn’t mind it at all. They didn’t want to give the Head Waiter
the slightest suspicion that they were inconvenienced and run the risk
of his getting sore at them and shutting them off altogether from the
privilege of eating in the restaurant which he didn’t own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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