The man ran his own car, and I sat between him and the chauffeur. Oh! what fun. We went flying down Riverside Drive, till we couldn’t fly any longer, and we had to turn into Seventy-Second Street and go soberly. Finally we got away down town. So my new master was a business man.
“What will you do?” he said when we at last pulled up before a sky-scraper. “Go to the garage with Louis, or come with me?”
As if there was any comparison between him and Louis! I snuggled close to his smart-looking shoes and silk socks, and together we went in and up, up to a suite of offices where young men, elderly men, stenographers and messengers hummed, and buzzed, and worked, and talked till one o’clock.
I lay under the swivel chair in my new master’s inner office, and enjoyed it all. I love to see human beings working hard.
At one o’clock my master rose, and leaving this hive of industry behind him, went out for lunch.
I have had training enough for ten dogs, and my new master guessed it. He never looked behind, and I never looked before. I kept my muzzle at his shoe heels, and we passed leisurely through the swarms of bees from other hives that were buzzing through halls and in elevators. All were after honey, and we found a particularly agreeable place for ours.
To my astonishment, when our turn came to enter an elevator, we did not go down to the street, but up to the top of the high building we were in. What a surprise awaited me there. I knew there were restaurants and roof gardens in New York, but I had never been in one. I had been in a nice restaurant in San Francisco at the top of a big building, and I was there on the day of a slight earthquake when the whole body of waiters, who wore mustaches, rushed down to the street, shaved their mustaches off, and went back to a famous club from which they had been discharged because they would wear those same mustaches.
Well, something very fine awaited us at the top of this New York building. We stepped out of the elevator, went through a door, and there we were on top of the enormous sky-scraper, and spread out before us was a view of wonderful New York, less wonderful Brooklyn, the Jersey coast, and the magnificent bay and islands.
Master had allowed me to jump on a chair so I could look about me, for dogs, unless they stand high, often lose a view that a human being can enjoy.
I was enchanted, but the wind blew so hard that I was glad to jump down, and follow my new master into a protected place. Here were tables, chairs, mirrors—a regular, attractive and pretty restaurant, better than any we would find on the street in this down town district. It was enclosed by glass, and from nearly all the seats, one could enjoy the same magnificent view that one had outside.