, with a bit of the lake to be seen from
one window. The grim, old-fashioned hotel furniture she lightened and
supplemented with some of her own things. There was a day bed--a narrow
and spindling affair for a woman of her height and comfortable
plumpness. In the daytime this couch was decked out with taffeta pillows
in rose and blue, with silk fruit and flowers on them, and gold braid.
There were two silk-shaded lamps, a shelf of books, the photographs of
the children in flat silver frames, a leather writing set on the desk,
curtains of pale tan English casement cloth at the windows. A cheerful
enough little room.

There were many elderly widows like herself living in the hotel on
slender, but sufficient, incomes. They were well-dressed women in trim
suits or crepes, and Field's special walking oxfords; and small smart
hats. They did a little cooking in their rooms--not much, they hastened
to tell you. Their breakfasts only--a cup of coffee and a roll or a
slice of toast, done on a little electric grill, the coffee above, the
toast below. The hotel dining room was almost free of women in the
morning. There were only the men, intent on their papers, and their eggs
and the 8.40 I. C. train. It was like a men's club, except, perhaps, for
an occasional business woman successful enough or indolent enough to do
away with the cooking of the surreptitious matutinal egg in her own
room. Sometimes, if they were to lunch at home, they carried in a bit of
cold ham, or cheese, rolls, butter, or small dry groceries concealed in
muffs or handbags. They even had diminutive iceboxes in closets. The
hotel, perforce, shut its eyes to this sort of thing. Even permitted the
distribution of tiny cubes of ice by the hotel porter. It was a harmless
kind of cheating. Their good dinners they ate in the hotel dining room
when not invited to dine with married sons or daughters or friends.

At ten or eleven in the morning you saw them issue forth, or you saw
"little" manicures going in. One spoke of these as "little" not because
of their size, which was normal, but in definition of their prices.
There were "little" dressmakers as well, and "little" tailors. In
special session they confided to one another the names or addresses of
any of these who happened to be especially deft, or cheap, or modish.

"I've found a little tailor over on Fifty-fifth. I don't want you to
tell any one else about him. He's wonderful. He's making me a suit that
looks e