"When—when we go—go to the city, Becky, we don't sublet Billy; we—we take him with us, not, Becky?"
"Yes, papa."
"Ya, ya, Becky."
The chief sponsors for the family hotel are neurasthenia and bridge whist, the inability of the homemaker and the debility of the housekeeper.
Under these invasions Hestia turns out the gas-logs, pastes a To Let sign on the windows, locks the front door behind her, and gives the key to the auctioneer.
The family holds out the dining-room clock and a pair of silver candlesticks that came over on the stupendously huge cargo which time and curio dealers have piled upon the good ship Mayflower; engages a three-room suite on the ninth floor of a European-plan hotel, and inaugurates upon the sly American paradox of housekeeping in non-housekeeping apartments.
The Wellington Hotel was a rococo haven for such refugees from the modern social choler, and its doors flew open and offered them a family rate, excellent cuisine, quarantine.
Excellent cuisine, however, is a clever but spiceless parody on home cookery.
Mr. Binswanger read his evening menu with the furrow deepening between his eyes.