n on either bank crowding to the
river's brink; and there within-doors was the stately portier in gold
braid, and the smiling, bowing, hand-rubbing landlord, alluring them to
his most expensive rooms, which so late in the season he would fain
have had them take. But in a little elevator, that mounted slowly, very
slowly, in the curve of the stairs, they went higher to something lower,
and the landlord retired baked, and left them to the ministrations of
the serving-men who arrived with their large and small baggage. All
these retired in turn when they asked to have a fire lighted in the
stove, without which Mrs. March would never have taken the fine stately
rooms, and sent back a pretty young girl to do it. She came indignant,
not because she had come lugging a heavy hod of coal and a great
arm-load of wood, but because her sense of fitness was outraged by the
strange demand.

"What!" she cried. "A fire in September!"

"Yes," March returned, inspired to miraculous aptness in his German by
the exigency, "yes, if September is cold."

The girl looked at him, and then, either because she thought him mad, or
liked him merry, burst into a loud laugh, and kindled the fire without a
word more.

He lighted all the reluctant gas-jets in the vast gilt chandelier, and
in less than half an hour the temperature of the place rose to at least
sixty-five Fahrenheit, with every promise of going higher. Mrs. March
made herself comfortable in a deep chair before the stove, and said
she would have her supper there; and she bade him send her just such a
supper of chicken and honey and tea as they had all had in Mayence when
they supped in her aunt's parlor there all those years ago. He wished to
compute the years, but she drove him out with an imploring cry, and
he went down to a very gusty dining-room on the ground-floor, where he
found himself alone with a young English couple and their little boy.
They were friendly, intelligent people, and would have been conversable,
apparently, but for the terrible cold of the husband, which he said he
had contracted at the manoeuvres in Hombourg. March said he was going
to Holland, and the Englishman was doubtful of the warmth which March
expected to find there. He seemed to be suffering from a suspense of
faith as to the warmth anywhere; from time to time the door of the
dining-room self-opened in a silent, ghostly fashion into the court
without, and let in a chilling draught about the legs of al