Peter flicked the dust from his tan shoes with a polka-dotted handkerchief, while rosy dreams, full of ambition and success filled his impressionable mind.
Through the snowy hills the train made its way cautiously, making long and apparently purposeless stops between stations, as if haunted by the fear of arriving too early. At such times Peter had leisure to carefully study the monotonous landscape, and he could not help but notice that the disparity in the size of the barn and that of the house in many cases was very great. A huge red barn, with white trimmings, surmounted by windmills, often stood towering over a tiny little weather-beaten, miserable house, which across a mile or two of snow, looked about the size of a child's block.
But small houses can be made very cosy, thought Peter complacently, for the glamor of adventure was on him, and no shade of sadness could assail his high spirits.
Some of the women who came to the train were disappointing in appearance. They were both shabby and sad, he thought, and he wondered why but looking closely at them he thought, with the fallacy of youth, that they must be very old.
Peter tried to outline his course of action. He would take a room at the hotel, making that his headquarters, and go out into the country—and stop at the Watson home, to ask directions or on some trivial errand, and meet her that way. But the thought would come back with tiresome regularity—suppose the first person who came to the door, gave him the directions he wanted—and shut the door. Well, of course he could ask for a drink,… but even that might fail. Perhaps he should have brought an egg-beater—or a self-wringing mop to demonstrate, or some of the other things his friends had suggested. However, that did not need to be decided at once. Peter prided himself on his ability to leave tomorrow alone! So he made his way to the hotel on the corner, facing the station, untroubled by what the morrow might bring forth, and registered his name in the large book which the clerk swung around in front of him, and quietly asked for a room with a bath.
The clerk bit through the toothpick he had in his mouth, so great was his surprise, but he answered steadily:
"All rooms with bath are taken—only rooms with bed left."
"Room with bed, then," said Peter, and he was given the key of No. 17, and pointed to the black and red carpeted stairway.