Do you see that man, on the other side of
the street, with the tool bag?"
"Yes," I said, "a plumber, is he not?"
"Exactly, a plumber. Used to drink heavily--couldn't keep
a job more than a week. Now, you can't drag him from his
work. Came to my house to fix a pipe under the kitchen
sink--wouldn't quit at six o'clock. Got in under the sink
and begged to be allowed to stay--said he hated to go
home. We had to drag him out with a rope. But here we
are at your hotel."
We entered.
But how changed the place seemed.
Our feet echoed on the flagstones of the deserted rotunda.
At the office desk sat a clerk, silent and melancholy,
reading the Bible. He put a marker in the book and closed
it, murmuring "Leviticus Two."
Then he turned to us.
"Can I have a room," I asked, "on the first floor?"
A tear welled up into the clerk's eye.
"You can have the whole first floor," he said, and he
added, with a half sob, "and the second, too, if you
like."
I could not help contrasting his manner with what it was
in the old days, when the mere mention of a room used to
throw him into a fit of passion, and when he used to tell
me that I could have a cot on the roof till Tuesday, and
after that, perhaps, a bed in the stable.
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