Letitia was dry-eyed until they took up the tiger-head, over which we had fallen at so many merry, unexpected moments, and began to fold it up. Then she burst into tears and ran into the dining-room, where I followed her, slowly, and mournfully. "Don't, Letitia," I said, feeling ridiculously oppressed. "Why should we mind? New Yorkers don't think anything of all this. They rather like it. They look upon it as emancipation from care and worry. Don't cry, my girl. See, let me wipe that smut from your nose." "No, you s-shan't," she sobbed, warding me off. "If I ch-choose to be s-smutty, I--I w-will be s-smutty." I sat down and beat a nervous tattoo on the last table that had the last cloth upon it. The last cruet, containing the last vinegar, and the last mustard stood on this last table that had the last cloth upon it. I allowed Letitia to have her cry out. When she had finished and had dried her eyes, the smut had expanded to such an extent that portions of it were smeared upon her cheeks, chin, and lips. Under the circumstances, there was bathos amid the poor girl's pathos! "I can't realize it, Archie," she said funereally, when her equanimity was restored. "I can't grasp the fact that this is really the end, and that to-night--to-night, my poor boy--we shall be lodged in a family hotel, so-called, I suppose, because none of the guests have families and the proprietor wouldn't take them in if they had!" "I dare say, dear, we shall be very comfortable." "Parlor and bedroom elegantly furnished; bath; generous _cuisine_; fine music; view of Central Park and Hudson River! I have learned it all by heart. Nothing of it belongs to us, Archie. It is the sort of thing one looks at for two weeks in Paris, or Rome, or Berlin, but to regard it as permanent is too dreadful. And the starchy, artificial women strutting into the dining-room, wearing all the clothes they can get on to their backs, with their cheerless husbands in tow, eating the dinners that they haven't ordered and grumbling about them; then, trotting away from the dining-room, back to their silent rooms, there to wait until it is bedtime." "You can't possibly know, Letitia," I said, "as you've never lived in one of these places. You are morbid, and a bit unreasonable." "Oh, I've met people who _have_ lived in them," she retorted, "and who have liked it. They had nothing to worry about and nothing even to think about--except how to kill time. A friend of Mrs. Archer's told me that the favorite topic of conversation was the food. Was the meat of the best quality? Were the vegetables fresh or canned? Was the table as bountiful this season as last? Most of the people, it seems, grow tired of the food and go to other restaurants in despair."