“Who is Miss Digges?”
“She’s the head one, the manager. And you never know when she’s comin’.” She snatched the door open, and popping her head out looked up and down the hall. “I caught her once, just like that. She was followin’ me around. Be careful about that hat now.”
With that parting injunction she took her departure. Her hand was in the pocket of her apron and her gaudily painted face wreathed with smiles. Money talks!
That midday dinner was a fairly good meal. After a good soup there was chicken fricassee, a vegetable, a salad, and ice-cream. The waitresses all wore clean aprons and the table linen was fresh. During the first part of the meal I realized an indefinite feeling of discomfort that I had attributed to “nerves” had become a headache. As dinner went on instead of the pain becoming less it increased.
The little waitress placed my ice-cream before me and I glanced up and smiled at her. That movement of the muscles in my face explained my headache. My skin felt so tightly stretched that it seemed as though I should have heard it crinkle. Leaving the ice-cream untouched I excused myself and hurried up to my room.
If I could only take my erysipelas medicine in time it would lessen the horror, perhaps prevent it entirely. Fumbling in the semidarkness of the hall I got my key in the lock of my room door, then found that I could neither turn it nor get it out. I must have struggled with that key for twenty minutes. Then going to the elevator I asked the operator if he could get it out.
“Sure, lady, I can get it out,” he told me. “But I don’t know what song and dance to give ’em in the office that’ll make ’em let me leave the elevator. I’ll go try and see.”
After waiting fifteen minutes for the man to return I pushed the button. The elevator started up at once. In sight of me the operator shook his head.
“I’ve been waiting for you to ring. I can’t move unless I get a ring. That’s a rule.” He opened the elevator door. “Maybe if you goes down you can get that woman to let me off. I told her you was sick and that it wouldn’t take me ten minutes, but it didn’t do no good.”
I stepped into the elevator and went down to the office. The clerk that afternoon was a small blonde woman, with a face as hard as a flint rock. After explaining conditions I asked her to allow the operator to leave the elevator long enough to get the key from my door—the man standing at my elbow remarking that it would not take more than five or six minutes.