Then I thought some citizen might take me in. She was a rather amiable-looking old lady, with a kind, motherly face.
"Madam!" This time I took off my hat. Ah, the common law of hunger brings you down and humbles your pride. "Do you live here, madam?"
"Why, yes, sir," edging to the sidewalk.
"Madam, I am a stranger here, and very hungry. It's baking-day at Nichols. Do you know where I can get anything to eat?"
"Well, no, I can't rightly say," still eyeing me suspiciously. "Hungry, be ye? Well, that's too bad, and Nichols baking."
I corroborated all these statements, standing bare-headed, a wild idea running through my head that her heart would soften and she would take me home and set me down in a big chintz-covered rocking chair, near the geraniums in the windows, and have her daughter—a nice, fresh, rosy-cheeked girl in an apron—go out into the buttery and bring in white cheese, and big slices of bread, and some milk, and preserves, and a—— But the picture was never completed.
"Well," she said slowly, "if Nichols is baking, I guess ye'll hev to wait till suppertime."
Then like a sail to a drowning man there rose before me the sign down the hill near the station, "Five meals for a dollar."
I had the money. I had the appetite. I would eat them all at once, and now.
In five minutes I was abreast of the extra-dry oyster-shells and the pool balls. Then I pushed open the door.