Well, I found it good enough. The bedrooms may have been dingy--to speak the truth they were--but the maid was pleasant and efficient, and the dinner, if not exciting, was palatable. But John said it "had nothing on a Lexington Avenue boarding-house." The truth is, he was tired out, and vexed because a telegram, which he had expected to find here, had not arrived. The next day he went to the manager, and an investigation was begun which led to the discovery that the telegram, which had arrived the day before, was in the porters' rack! It seems that Garvin's has doors on two streets, and the porter of the door by which we did _not_ enter had received it. When John asked why it had not been sent to his room, he was informed, first, that no one had told _that_ porter that we were in the house, and, second, that telegrams were sent only to private sitting-rooms! I don't know which excuse made him the more angry. It was then he made his remark about the Lexington Avenue boarding-house. Not that he knows anything about them, for he has never stayed in one in his life, but because it was the first thing he thought of. It was an example of what I once heard you call "the universe of discourse." But, "you bet," I didn't tell him so! At dinner John looked round the dreary dining-room and asked where were the "county families"? I also was feeling the strain of the day, and said "I hoped to meet them later." He replied he hoped he might be out when they called. By this time I was well-nigh desperate, and suggested that he go outside and smoke his cigar in the street, for I had caught a glimpse of the "Smoke Room," which looks out on a mews, and is more like a dog-kennel than a room, and I did not feel I could stand any more remarks about "private hotels"! _Entre nous_, I advise you never to go to one. I have no doubt if you were a "county family," and came up every year as your father had done before you, and took the "first floor front," with a private sitting-room, they would "do you well." But it is no place for transients. As we had no sitting-room, I went to the dreary parlor to read and, if possible, to quiet my mind before going to bed. But instead of reading, I began to think of John, and the more I thought of him the sadder I grew. I know no one who bears the great troubles of life more patiently than he, but a petty thing, like this telegram, poisons him as the black flies poisoned me in the Adirondacks! They only bite most people, but they send me to bed with a temperature! And the worst of it is he suffers such remorse after one of these attacks. Why should we laugh at Mrs. Gummage? There are people who "feel it more than others." However, I reflected that there was nothing I could do about it, and so turned to my book.