“Of course it must be,” said his wife, “since they brought us here.”
“It certainly is the place,” said Margery, “for there is the name over that door.”
“How do you feel about it?” said Mr. Archibald to his wife.
“I feel very well about it,” said she. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“How do you feel about it?” he asked of the younger lady.
“Well,” she answered, “I don’t exactly understand it. I had visions of forests and wilds and tumbling mountain streams and a general air of primevalism, and I am surprised to see this fine hotel with piazzas, and croquet-grounds, and tennis-courts, and gravelled walks, and babies in their carriages, and elderly ladies carrying sun-shades.”
“But it seems to me that there is a forest behind it,” said Mr. Archibald.
“Yes,” replied Margery, a little dolefully, “it has that to back it up.”
“Don’t let us stand here at the bottom of the steps talking,” said Mrs. Archibald. “I must say I am very agreeably surprised.”
In the wide hall which ran through the middle of the hotel, and not far from the clerk’s desk, there sat a large, handsome man, a little past middle age, who, in a hearty voice, greeted the visitors as they entered, but without rising from his chair. This was Peter Sadler, the owner of the hotel, the legal owner of a great deal of the neighboring country, and the actual ruler of more of said country than could be easily marked out upon a map or stated in surveyors’ terms.