p with a small capitalist, had started a syndicate of inns. He
advertised: "The White Line Hotels. Fellow-drummers, when you see the
White Line sign hung out, you know you're in for good beds and good
coffee."

The idea seemed good to her. She fancied that traveling-men would go
from one White Line Hotel to another. The hotels had been established in
a dozen towns along the Pennsylvania Railroad, in Norristown, Reading,
Williamsport, and others, and now Bob Sidney was promising to invade
Ohio and Indiana. The blazed White Line across the continent caught
Una's growing commercial imagination. And she liked several of Mr.
Sidney's ideas: The hotels would wire ahead to others of the Line for
accommodations for the traveler; and a man known to the Line could get
credit at any of its houses, by being registered on identifying cards.

She decided to capture Mr. Sidney. She made plans.

In the spring she took a mysterious two weeks' leave of absence and
journeyed through New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The
woman who had quite recently regarded it as an adventure to go to
Brooklyn was so absorbed in her Big Idea that she didn't feel
self-conscious even when she talked to men on the train. If they
smacked their lips and obviously said to themselves, "Gee! this is
easy--not a bad little dame," she steered them into discussing hotels;
what they wanted at hotels and didn't get; what was their favorite hotel
in towns in from fifteen hundred to forty thousand inhabitants, and
precisely what details made it the favorite.

She stayed at two or three places a day for at least one meal--hotels in
tiny towns she had never heard of, and in larger towns that were
fumbling for metropolitanism. She sought out all the summer resorts that
were open so early. She talked to travelers, men and women; to
hack-drivers and to grocers supplying hotels; to proprietors and their
wives; to clerks and waitresses and bell-boys, and unconsidered,
observant porters. She read circulars and the catalogues of furniture
establishments.

Finally, she visited each of Mr. Bob Sidney's White Line Hotels. Aside
from their arrangements for "accommodations" and credit, their superior
cleanliness, good mattresses, and coffee with a real taste, she did not
find them preferable to others. In their rows of cuspidors and
shouldering desks, and barren offices hung with insurance calendars, and
dining-rooms ornamented with portraits of decomposed ducks,