ad porter were
packing and removing a formidable array of trunks and suit cases,
while a woman of considerably less than middle age, comely in person
and tastefully attired in a loose dressing gown of flowered silk,
alternated between giving sharp directions to the perspiring workers
and venting her abundant wrath and disappointment upon the chief
clerk, as with evident reluctance she filled one of a number of signed
checks to cover the hotel expenses of herself and servants for a
period of three weeks, although they had arrived only the day before
and, on account of the stifling heat, were leaving on the night
express for Lucerne. The clerk regretted exceedingly, but on Madam
Ames' order the suite had been held vacant for that length of time,
during which the management had daily looked for her arrival, and had
received no word of her delay. Had Madam herself not just admitted
that she had altered her plans en route, without notifying the hotel,
and had gone first to the Italian lakes, without cancelling her order
for the suite? And so her sense of justice must convince her that the
management was acting wholly within its rights in making this demand.

While the preparations for departure were in progress the woman's
two children played about the trunks and raced through the rooms
and adjoining corridor with a child's indifference to climatal
conditions.

"Let's ring for the elevator and then hide, Sidney!" suggested the
girl, as she panted after her brother, who had run to the far end of
the long hall.

"No, Kathleen, it wouldn't be right," objected the boy.

"Right! Ho! ho! What's the harm, goody-goody? Go tell mother, if you
want to!" she called after him, as he started back to their rooms.
Refusing to accompany him, the girl leaned against the balustrade of a
stairway which led to the floor below and watched her brother until he
disappeared around a turn of the corridor.

"Baby!" burst from her pouting lips. "'Fraid of everything! It's no
fun playing with him!" Then, casting a glance of inquiry about her,
"I'd just like to hide down these stairs. Mother and nurse never let
me go where I want to."

Obeying the impulse stimulated by her freedom for the moment, the
child suddenly turned and darted down the stairway. On the floor
beneath she found herself at the head of a similar stairway, down
which she likewise hurried, with no other thought than to annoy her
brother, who was sure to be sent in search of her