Allie answered his phone call about eight o'clock the next morning.
"Ready for breakfast?" he inquired.
"Why, we et at daylight," she told him, in some astonishment. "I been ridin' since then."
"Indeed! Putting roses in your cheeks, eh? With whom did you go?"
"Oh, one of the elevator men."
"B—but—" Gray sputtered, deeply shocked. "Why, Miss Briskow, they're negroes! Riding with a nigger! My heavens! Where did you go?"
"Nowhere. Just up and down."
It was a moment before the man could speak, then he said, in a queerly repressed voice: "That—is quite different. I'll run down and get a bite and join you in no time."
"Seems awful funny not to have any housework to do in the morning," Ma Briskow confessed, as they left the Ajax. "A hotel would spoil me in no time."
"I couldn't keep her from makin' up the beds," Allie announced.