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“We went to a beautiful hotel. There was a parlor with a red velvet carpet and red stuffed furniture, and a green sitting-room, and a blue one. The ceilin’ had pictures on it. There was a handsome young gent
leman down-stairs at a counter in the room where we went first, and mother asked him, before I could stop her, if the folks in the hotel was all honest. She’d been worrying all the way for fear somebody ‘d steal the money.

“The gentleman said – he was real polite – if we had any money or valuables, we had better leave them with him, and he would put them in the safe. So we did. Then a young man with brass buttons on his coat took us to the elevator and showed us our rooms. We had a parlor with a velvet carpet an’ stuffed furniture and a gilt clock on the mantel-shelf, two bedrooms, and a bath-room. There ain’t anything in town equal to it. Lawyer Maxham ain’t got anything to come up to it. The young man offered to untie the rope on the trunk, so I let him. He seemed real kind about it.

“Soon’s the young man went I says to mother, ‘We ain’t going down to get any tea to-night.’

“‘Why not?’ says she.

“‘I ain’t going down a step in this old dress,’ says I, ‘an’ you ain’t going in yours.’

“Mother didn’t like it very well. She said she was faint to her stomach, and wanted some tea, but I made her eat some gingerbread we’d brought from home, an’ get along. The young man with the brass buttons come again after a while an’ asked if there was anything we wanted, but I thanked him an’ told him there wasn’t.

“I would have asked him to bring up mother some tea and a hot biscuit, but I didn’t know but what it would put ’em out; it was after seven o’clock then. So we got along till morning.

“The next morning mother an’ me went out real early, an’ went into a bakery an’ bought some cookies. We ate ’em as we went down the street, just to stay our stomachs; then we went to buying. I’d taken some of the money in my purse, an’ I got mother an’ me, first of all, two handsome black silk dresses, and we put ’em on as soon as we got back to the hotel, and went down to breakfast.

“You never see anythin’ like the dining-room, and the kinds of things to eat. We couldn’t begin to eat ’em all. There were men standin’ behind our chairs to wait on us all the time.

“Right after breakfast mother an’ me put our rooms to rights; then we went out again and bought things at the stores. Everybody was buying Christmas presents, an’ the stores were all trimmed with evergreen – you never see anything like it. Mother an’ me never had any Christmas presents, an’ I told her we’d begin, an’ buy ’em for each other. When the money I’d taken with us was gone, I sent things to the hotel for the gentleman at the counter to pay, the way he’d told me to. That day we bought our breastpins and this ring, an’ mother’s and my gold watch, an’ – I got one for you too, William. Don’t you say anything – it’s your Christmas present. That afternoon we went to Central Park, an’ that evenin’ we went to the theatre. The next day we went to the stores again, an’ I bought mother a black satin dress, and me a green one. I got this I’ve got on, too. It’s what they call a tea-gown. I always wore it to tea in the hotel after I got it. I got a hat, too, an’ mother a bonnet; an’ I got a fur cape, and mother a cloak with fur on the neck an’ all around it. That evening mother an’ me went to the opera; we sat in something they call a box. I wore my new green silk and breastpin, an’ mother wore her black satin. We both of us took our bonnets off. The music was splendid; but I wouldn’t have young folks go to it much.