"Is there another hotel here?"
Even a worm will turn.
"No."
That settled it. I didn't know any inhabitant—not even a committeeman. It was the West Norrington Arms or the street.
So I started for Nichols. By that time I could have eaten the shingles off the church.
Nichols proved to be a one-and-a-half-story house with a glass door, a calico curtain, and a jingle bell. Inside was a cake shop, presided over by a thin woman in a gingham dress and black lace cap and wig. In the rear stood a marble-top table with iron legs. This made it a restaurant.
"Can you get me something to eat? Steak, ham and eggs—anything?" I had fallen in my desires.
She looked me all over. "Well, I'm 'mazin' sorry, but I guess you'll have to excuse us; we're just bakin', and this is our busy day. S'mother time we should like to, but to-day"——
I closed the door and was in the street again. I had no time for lengthy discussions that didn't lead to something tangible and eatable.
"Alone in London," I said to myself. "Lost in New York. Adrift in West Norrington. Plenty of money to buy, and nobody to sell. Everybody going about their business with full stomachs, happy, contented,—all with homes, and firesides, and ice chests, and things hanging to cellar rafters, hams and such like, and I a wanderer and hungry, an outcast, a tramp."