"That will do very well," Stone answered.
"Front!" called the clerk. "Show Mr. Stone up to 313."
When the naval officer reached room 313 it was nearly six o'clock. He threw open the window and looked down at the street below. Even at that height the heat welled up from the stone sidewalks and from the brick walls opposite. To his ear it seemed almost as though the mighty roar of the metropolis rose to him muffled and made more remote by the heat. He lighted a cigar and leaned out of the window, and wondered how many people there were in all the city whom he knew by sight, and how very few there were who could call him by name.
A sweltering wind from the west swayed the thick and dusty branches of the trees which lined the curb far down below him. He threw his cigar away half smoked. Then he took a cold bath, and went down to the dining-room somewhat refreshed.
At the table to which the head waiter waved him there was already one man sitting, a tall, handsome young fellow of twenty-five, perhaps. Stone liked the man's face, and he liked the way the flannel shirt was cut so as to leave the full throat free. The manner in which the simple scarf was knotted and its ends tucked into the shirt he noticed also; and he saw that the young fellow had insisted on bringing his black slouch hat with him into the dining-room, having hung it on the back of the next chair. When this seat was given to Stone, the hat was promptly transferred to the chair on the other side of the owner. Stone made up his mind that his neighbor was a ranchman of some sort, who had come East on business.
It does not take long for two lonely men to get acquainted; and before he had eaten his green corn, Stone knew all about his neighbor at table, and the neighbor knew something about him.
"I sized you up when you come in," the young fellow said, "an' I took stock in you from the start. Somehow I kind o' thought you was one of Uncle Sam's boys, though o' course I didn't 'low you was a sailor. I never see a sailor till this mornin', when I went down on the dock to get news of this Touraine steamer, an' the sailor down there was a Frenchman, an' not like you, not by a jugful. I suppose, now, Uncle Sam's sailors are like his other boys I've seen at home often. There's Dutchmen that ain't bad men, an' I've seen Dagoes you could tie to, and sometimes a greaser, now and then—not but what they's powerful skase, greasers you can trust—but Uncle Sam's boys are white men every time."
The young fellow was Clay Magruder. He was a cowboy, as Stone had supposed, and he was in New York on a mission of the highest importance to himself. He was waiting for the girl he wanted to marry, and she was expected to arrive the next morning on the French steamer.
"The grub here ain't so bad, is it?" Magruder said, as the repast drew to an end. "O' course it ain't like what we get at home. I don't find nowhere no beef that's equal to the beef we've been gettin' right along now for two years, ever since I've been with Old Man Pettigrew. The Hash-knife Outfit always has the best cookin' on the trail. It's jest notorious for it. Things here in New York is good enough, but the flavor don't take hold of you like it does at home; an' their coffee East is poor stuff, ain't it? It don't bite you like coffee should."
After dinner they went into the smoking-room of the hotel, and Stone offered a cigar to his new friend.