But this girl—oh, she makes such a pretty boy! And the ladies at the hotel over in Brooklyn, they just dote on her when she's not only a boy but a bell-boy. Her name may be Nancy when she's in petticoats, but in trousers she's Nathaniel—in short, Nat.
Now, Nat, in blue and buttons, with his nails kept better than most boys', with his curly hair parted in the middle, and with a gentle tang to his voice that makes him almost girlish—who would suspect Nat of having a stolen pass-key in his pocket and a pretty fair knowledge of the contents of almost every top bureau-drawer in the hotel?
Not Mrs. Sarah Kingdon, a widow just arrived from Philadelphia, and desperately gone on young Mr. George Moriway, also fresh from Philadelphia, and desperately gone on Mrs. Kingdon's money.
The tips that lady gave the bad boy Nat! I knew I couldn't make you believe it any other way; that's why I passed 'em on to you, Tommy-boy.
The hotel woman, you know, girls, is a hotel woman because she isn't fit to be anything else. She's lazy and selfish and little, and she's shifted all her legitimate cares on to the proprietor's shoulders. She actually—you can understand and share my indignation, can't you, Tom, as you've shared other things?—she even gives over her black tin box full of valuables to the hotel clerk to put in the safe; the coward! But her vanity—ah, there's where we get her, such speculators as you and myself. She's got to outshine the woman who sits at the next table, and so she borrows her diamonds from the clerk, wears 'em like the peacock she is, and trembles till they're back in the safe again.
In the meantime she locks them up in the tin box which she puts in her top bureau-drawer, hides the key, forgets where she hid it, and—O Tom! after searching for it for hours and making herself sick with anxiety, she ties up her head in a wet handkerchief with vinegar on it and—rings the bell for the bell-boy!
He comes.
As I said, he's a prompt, gentle little bell-boy, slight, looks rather young for his job, but that very youth and innocence of his make him such a fellow to trust!
"Nat," says Mrs. Kingdon, tearfully pressing half a dollar into the nice lad's hand, "I—I've lost something and I want you to—to help me find it."
"Yes'm," says Nat. He's the soul of politeness.