“See what 882 wants.” Clyde was off toward one of the two elevators marked, “employees,” the proper one to use, he thought, because he had been out from one of the fast passenger elevators cautioned him as to his mistake.
“Goin' to a room?” he called. “Use the guest elevators. Them's for the servants or anybody with bundles.”
Clyde hastened to cover his mistake. “Eight,” he called. There being no one else on the elevator with them, the negro elevator boy in charge of the car saluted him at once.
“You'se new, ain't you? I ain't seen you around here befo'.”
“Yes, I just came on,” replied Clyde.
“Well, you won't hate it here,” commented this youth in the most friendly way. “No one hates this house, I'll say. Eight did you say?” He stopped the car and Clyde stepped out. He was too nervous to think to ask the direction and now began looking at room numbers, only to decide after a moment that he was in the wrong corridor. The soft brown carpet under his feet; the soft, cream-tinted walls; the snow-white bowl lights set in the ceiling—all seemed to him parts of a perfection and a social superiority which was almost unbelievable—so remote from all that he had ever known.
And finally, finding 882, he knocked timidly and was greeted after a moment by a segment of a very stout and vigorous body in a blue and white striped union suit and a related segment of a round and florid head in which was set one eye and some wrinkles to one side of it.
“Here's a dollar bill, son,” said the eye seemingly—and now a hand appeared holding a paper dollar. It was fat and red. “You go out to a haberdasher's and get me a pair of garters—Boston Garters—silk—and hurry back.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Clyde, and took the dollar. The door closed and he found himself hustling along the hall toward the elevator, wondering what a haberdasher's was. As old as he was—seventeen—the name was new to him. He had never even heard it before, or noticed it at least. If the man had said a “gents' furnishing store,” he would have understood at once, but now here he was told to go to a haberdasher's and he did not know what it was. A cold sweat burst out upon his forehead. His knees trembled. The devil! What would he do now? Could he ask any one, even Hegglund, and not seem
He pushed the elevator button. The car began to descend. A haberdasher. A haberdasher. Suddenly a sane thought reached him. Supposing he didn't know what a haberdasher was? After
