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There’s Danger In Numbers
by
Marjorie began her story, began to recite her lesson: “Outside rooms, not lower than the fourth nor higher than the eighth floor; the Fifth Avenue side if possible–and was Mrs. Robert Blake in?”
The lackadaisical young man consulted the register with a disparaging eye.
“Not staying here,” Marjorie understood him to remark.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter–but about the rooms?”
“Front!” drawled the young man, and several blue-clad bellboys ceased from lolling on a bench and approached the desk.
“Register here,” commanded the clerk, twirling the big book on its turn-table toward Marjorie so suddenly that she jumped, and laying his pink-tinted finger on its first blank line.
“No, thank you,” she stammered, “I was not to register until my husband–” and her heart cried out within her for that she was saying these new, dear words for the first time to so unresponsive a stranger–“told me not to register until he should come and see that the rooms were satisfactory. He will be here presently.”
“We have no unsatisfactory rooms,” was the answer, followed by: “Front 625 and 6,” and fresh pages and bellboys fell upon the yellow baggage, and Marjorie, in a hot confusion of counting her property and wondering how to resent the young man’s impertinence, turned to follow them.
“One moment, madam,” the clerk murmured; “name and address, please.” The pages were escaping with the bags, and Mrs. Blake hardly turned as she answered, according to the habit of her lifetime:
“Underwood, West Hills, N.J.,” and flew to the elevator, which had already swallowed her baggage and the boys. Up to suite Number 625 and 6 she was conducted by her blue-clad attendants, who opened the windows, pushed the furniture about–then waited; who fetched ice water, drew down shades–and waited; who closed the windows, drew up the shades, shifted the baggage from sofa to armchair, unbuckled the straps of a suitcase, indicated the telephone–and waited; who put the bags on the bed, opened the windows, pushed the furniture back against the wall–and waited. Marjorie viewed all these manoeuvres with amused but unsophisticated eyes. She smiled serenely at the smiling bellboys–while they waited. She thanked them prettily for their assistance–and they waited. She dismissed them still prettily, and it is to be regretted that, in the privacy of the hall, they swore.
She then took possession of her little domain. The clerk, however unbearably, had spoken the truth, and the rooms were charming. There could be no question, she decided, of going farther. She spread her pretty wedding silver on the dressing-table, she hung her negligee with her hat and coat in the closet. She went down on her knees and investigated the slide which was to lead shoes to the bootblack; she tested, with her bridal glove-stretcher, the electrical device in the bathroom for the heating of curling irons. She studied all the pictures, drew out all the drawers, examined the furniture and bric-a-brac, and then she looked at her watch. Only half an hour was gone.
She went to the window and watched the hats of the passing multitude, noting how short and fore-shortened all the figures seemed and how queerly the horses passed along beneath her, without visible legs to move them. Still an hour before John could be expected.
And then their trunks, hers large and his small, made their thumping entrance. The porter crossed to the window and raised the shade, crossed to her trunk and undid its straps, dried his moistened brow–and waited. Marjorie thanked him and smiled. He smiled and waited, drying his brow industriously the while. No village black-smith ever had so damp a brow as he. She sympathized with him in the matter of the heat; he agreed–and waited. He undid the straps of John’s trunk; he moved her trunk into greater proximity to the window and the light; he carried John’s trunk into the sitting-room; he performed innumerable feats of prowess before her. But she only smiled and commended in an unfinancial way. Finally he laid violent hands upon his truck and retreated into the hall, swearing, as became his age, more luridly than the bellboys.