Then began their search for rooms. At first it seemed discouraging; neatness outside was not always a sign of what to expect inside. They labored up-stairs and down again several times. At one attractive private house they entered, expecting quiet, homelike rooms. In the tiny parlor they found five cots set “cheek by jowl” as close as they could be jammed. They smiled at this, but found the rest of the rooms as fully utilized. Mr. Douglass made some objection, and was told by the self-possessed landlady that “some very fine gentlemen thought her fifty-cent beds were very elegant.” At another house they were passing, a boy who couldn’t have been over five years old rushed out like a little Indian on the warpath, crying, “Hi! You lookin’ fer rooms?” Amused at the little fellow’s enterprise, our travelers followed him, the boy going forward on his sturdy little legs, and crying, “Hi, there, Mama! Here’s roomers! I got you some roomers!” [Illustration: “HI, THERE, MAMA! HERE’S ROOMERS!”] But unfortunately the boy proved more attractive than the rooms. After a long walk, but without going far from the Fair Grounds, they took rooms at a very good hotel. The price was high, perhaps, but reasonable considering the advantages and the demand for lodgings. They took two rooms, one with a double bed for the boys, the other a single room for the tutor. Gladly they dropped the satchels that had made their muscles ache, and after leaving the keys of their rooms with the hotel clerk, they set forth for their first visit to the Fair. In order that guests should not forget to leave their keys, each was inserted at right angles into a nickel-plated strip of metal far too long to go comfortably into the pocket even of an absent-minded German professor. “One advantage of being in a hotel,” said Mr. Douglass, as they walked toward the entrance of the grounds, “is the fact that on rainy, disagreeable days we can get meals there if we choose. It is not always pleasant to have to hunt breakfast through the rain. But usually we shall dine where we happen to be in the grounds; there are restaurants of all sorts near the exhibits, from a lunch-counter up.” Along the sidewalk that led from their hotel to the entrance were dining-rooms, street-peddlers’ counters, peddlers with trays—all meant as inducements to leave money in the great Western metropolis. One thing the boys found very amusing was an Italian bootblack’s stand surrounded on three sides by a blue mosquito-netting. “If it had been on all sides,” said Harry, “I could have understood it, because it might be a fly-discourager. But now I think it must be only a way of attracting attention.” They had arrived, luckily, on a “fête night.” Though tired and hungry, they all agreed that it would never do not to take advantage of so excellent a chance to secure a favorable first impression. So they bought tickets at a little wooden booth, and, entering a turnstile one by one, were at last in the great White City.