Being too dark to read or write in my room, I spent the morning straightening out my few belongings. On hanging the suit in which I had set out on my adventure and my coat in the closet, it seemed so full that I decided to fold my nightie and place it under my pillow.
A few minutes later a gaily frescoed individual, who informed me that she was the assistant housekeeper, entered to exchange my Peter Pan towel for a fresh one. Evidently she realized that my little pancake of a pillow had risen too high and too suddenly, for she jerked it up.
“There!” she exclaimed, pointing a stubby red finger at my nightie. “Night-clothes are to be hung in the closet. Don’t you see the rules?”—pointing at a long, printed page tacked against the inside of my door. “Can’t you read? You can’t keep nothin’ under your piller nor under your bed neither.”
Here, going down on her knees, she peered carefully under the bed; then, still kneeling, she passed her eyes over every square inch of the four shiny yellow walls. When they encountered a paper bag hanging on a nail to one side of the narrow chiffonier, she scuffled angrily to her feet.
“I’m gonna report you,” she cried, glaring at me. “It’s positive against our rules—guests drivin’ nails in the walls. This ain’t no tenement. Seems like you can’t teach some folks nothin’.”
“Suppose you look at that nail,” I advised her, as I removed the paper bag. “You can see for yourself that it has been here since before the walls were painted. It is covered with the same coat of yellow paint. If you draw it out ever so carefully it would mar the wall.”
“Well, you mustn’t hang nothin’ on it,” she told me.
“What am I to do with my winter hat?” I asked, as I slipped a quarter into the pocket of her apron. “It is too large to get in the closet, and too good to throw away. Besides, that manila bag is so near the color of the wall it is scarcely noticeable.”
She put her hand into her pocket and felt the size of the coin.
“Well, if you didn’t drive the nail I won’t say nothin’ about the other things,” she agreed. Then she added cautiously: “But you’ll have to be on the lookout when Miss Digges comes round. She don’t allow nothin’ hung on the walls.”