“One in the building, captain, right outside the south lobby,” replied the Negro, and Clyde hurried there, greatly relieved.
Yet he felt odd and strange in his close-fitting uniform and his peculiar hat.
All the time he was troubled by the notion that his small, round, tight-fitting hat might fall off. And he kept pressing it furtively and yet firmly down.
And bustling into the haberdasher’s, which was blazing with lights outside, he exclaimed,
“I want to get a pair of Boston silk garters.”
“All right, son, here you are,” replied a sleek, short man with bright, bald head, pink face and gold-rimmed glasses.
“For some one in the hotel, I presume?
Well, we’ll make that seventy-five cents, and here’s a dime for you,” he remarked as he wrapped up the package and dropped the dollar in the cash register.
“I always like to do the right thing by you boys in there because I know you come to me whenever you can.”
Clyde took the dime and the package, not knowing quite what to think.
The garters must be seventy-five cents — he said so.
Hence only twenty-five cents need to be returned to the man.
Then the dime was his.
And now, maybe — would the man really give him another tip?
He hurried back into the hotel and up to the elevators.
The strains of a string orchestra somewhere were filling the lobby with delightful sounds.
People were moving here and there — so well- dressed, so much at ease, so very different from most of the people in the streets or anywhere, as he saw it.
An elevator door flew open.
Various guests entered. Then Clyde and another bell-boy who gave him an interested glance.
At the sixth floor the boy departed.
At the eighth Clyde and an old lady stepped forth.
He hurried to the door of his guest and tapped.
The man opened it, somewhat more fully dressed than before. He had on a pair of trousers and was shaving.
“Back, eh,” he called.
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde, handing him the package and change.
“He said it was seventy-five cents.”
“He’s a damned robber, but you can keep the change, just the same,” he replied, handing him the quarter and closing the door.
Clyde stood there, quite spellbound for the fraction of a second.
“Thirty-five cents”— he thought —“thirty-five cents.”
And for one little short errand.
Could that really be the way things went here?
It couldn’t be, really.
It wasn’t possible — not always.
And then, his feet sinking in the soft nap of the carpet, his hand in one pocket clutching the money, he felt as if he could squeal or laugh out loud.
Why, thirty-five cents — and for a little service like that.
This man had given him a quarter and the other a dime and he hadn’t done anything at all.
He hurried from the car at the bottom — the strains of the orchestra once more fascinated him, the wonder of so well-dressed a throng thrilling him — and made his way to the bench from which he had first departed.
And following this he had been called to carry the three bags and two umbrellas of an aged farmer-like couple, who had engaged a parlor, bedroom and bath on the fifth floor.
En route they kept looking at him, as he could see, but said nothing.
Yet once in their room, and after he had promptly turned on the lights near the door, lowered the blinds and placed the bags upon the bag racks, the middle-aged and rather awkward husband — a decidedly solemn and bewhiskered person — studied him and finally observed:
“Young fella, you seem to be a nice, brisk sort of boy — rather better than most we’ve seen so far, I must say.”
“I certainly don’t think that hotels are any place for boys,” chirped up the wife of his bosom — a large and rotund person, who by this time was busily employed inspecting an adjoining room.
“I certainly wouldn’t want any of my boys to work in ’em — the way people act.”
“But here, young man,” went on the elder, laying off his overcoat and fishing in his trousers pocket.
“You go down and get me three or four evening papers if there are that many and a pitcher of ice- water, and I’ll give you fifteen cents when you get back.”
“This hotel’s better’n the one in Omaha, Pa,” added the wife sententiously.
“It’s got nicer carpets and curtains.”
And as green as Clyde was, he could not help smiling secretly.
Openly, however, he preserved a masklike solemnity, seemingly effacing all facial evidence of thought, and took the change and went out.
And in a few moments he was back with the ice-water and all the evening papers and departed smilingly with his fifteen cents.