Poor Ellen, I thought to myself, here is a chance to whine. These rich people have everything—the big houses, the fine river, the view of the hills and trees over in New Jersey, but will she complain?—Not a bit of it. Ellen doesn’t care for scenery, and she finds the Drive windy. She likes her snug, warm rooms, and the neighbours of her own position in life.
We entered a specially grand apartment-house with a marble entrance, and plenty of mirrors and palms, and we went up in the elevator to the seventh story. Ellen pressed a bell, and a maid with her cap over one ear opened the door.
She stared at us, and said no one was up.
Ellen wasn’t surprised. She knew the ways of well-to-do white folks.
“I’ll wait,” she said patiently.
We sat down, and waited and waited. The first to appear was the Boston bull. He came yawning out of a bed-room, turned stiff-legged when he smelt me, hipped four times round the swell reception room where we were, then emboldened by my detached air, came up, smelt his collar on my neck, bristled, and closed with me.
As he had too much fat and too little wind, I easily floored him, and such a gurgling—I thought he’d choke to death with rage and fright.
A lovely stout lady in a pretty dressing-gown came flying from one room, and a lean, hard-looking athlete of a man from another.
“Oh! my precious Beanie,” wailed the lady. Really, the New York women do give their dogs sickening names. This fellow, I learned, was Baked Beans, and he had just about as much waist as a bean.