There seemed to be nothing more to say. We left our door ajar and, with lingering backward glances, went down to the dining room.
Never shall I forget that dinner. It was as bad as our lunch had been good. The room was hot; the table-cloth was far from being immaculate; the waitress was untidy and ill-bred; and there was nothing that we could eat.
Nor were we fastidious. We neither expected, nor desired, luxuries; we asked only well-cooked, clean, wholesome food; but if this is to be obtained in White Horse, we found it not—although we did not cease trying while we were there.
We went out and walked the clean streets and looked into restaurants, and tried to see something good to eat, or at least a clean table-cloth; but in the end we went hungry to bed. We had wine and graham wafers in our bags, and they consoled; but we craved something substantial, notwithstanding our hearty lunch. It was the air—the light, fresh, sparkling air of mountain, river, and lake—that gave us our appetites.
When we had walked until our feet could no longer support us, we returned to the hotel. On the way, we saw a sign announcing ice-cream soda. We went in and asked for some, but the ice-cream was "all out."
"But we have plain soda," said the man, looking so wistful that we at once decided to have some, although we both detested it.
He fizzed it elaborately into two very small glasses and led us back into a little dark room, where were chairs and tables, and he gave us spoons with which to eat our plain soda. "Let me pay," said my friend, airily; and she put ten cents on the table.
The man looked at it and grinned. He did not smile; he grinned. Then he went away and left it lying there.
We tried to drink the soda-water; then we tried to coax it through straws; finally we tried to eat it with spoons—as others about us were doing; but we could not. It looked like soap-bubbles and it tasted like soap-bubbles.
"He didn't see his ten cents," said my friend, gathering it up. "I suppose one pays at the counter out there. I would cheerfully pay him an extra ten if I had not gotten the taste of the abominable stuff in my mouth."