fore her astonished eyes. Open flew her little
door, down jumped the cabman, out rushed other menials and laid hands
upon her baggage. Horses fretted, pedestrians risked their lives, motors
snorted and newsboys clamored as an enormous police-appearing person
assisted her to alight. He had such an air of having been expecting and
longing for her arrival that she wondered innocently whether John had
telephoned about her. This thought persisted with her until she and her
following of baggage-laden pages drew up before the desk, but it fell
from her with a crash when she encountered the aloof, impersonal,
world-weary regard of the presiding clerk. In all Marjorie's happy life
she had never met anything but welcome. The belle of a fast-growing town
is rather a sheltered person, and not even the most confiding of
ingenues could detect a spark of greeting in the lackadaisical regard of
this highly-manicured young man.

Marjorie began her story, began to recite her lesson: "Outside rooms,
not lower than the fourth nor higher than the eighth floor; the Fifth
Avenue side if possible--and was Mrs. Robert Blake in?"

The lackadaisical young man consulted the register with a disparaging eye.

"Not staying here," Marjorie understood him to remark.

"Oh, it doesn't matter--but about the rooms?"

"Front!" drawled the young man, and several blue-clad bellboys ceased
from lolling on a bench and approached the desk.

"Register here," commanded the clerk, twirling the big book on its
turn-table toward Marjorie so suddenly that she jumped, and laying his
pink-tinted finger on its first blank line.

"No, thank you," she stammered, "I was not to register until my
husband--" and her heart cried out within her for that she was saying
these new, dear words for the first time to so unresponsive a
stranger--"told me not to register until he should come and see that the
rooms were satisfactory. He will be here presently."

"We have no unsatisfactory rooms," was the answer, followed by: "Front
625 and 6," and fresh pages and bellboys fell upon the yellow baggage,
and Marjorie, in a hot confusion of counting her property and wondering
how to resent the young man's impertinence, turned to follow them.

"One moment, madam," the clerk murmured; "name and address, please." The
pages were escaping with the bags, and Mrs. Blake hardly turned as she
answered, according to the habit of her lifetime:

"Underwood, West Hills, N.J.," and flew to the e