And Yet the Girls in the Beauty Parlor Were Not Checked
After walking and climbing for fifteen minutes she found herself entering a long room filled with lounge chairs and lined on two walls by tall glass cases. The contents of these cases surprised her, for in them were more kinds of mounted fish than she had ever seen.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Am I in the wrong place? Is this a museum?”
“No, Miss.” the smiling bellboy who took her bag replied. “This hotel was once owned by a very rich man who collected fish. He’s dead now.”
“But his collection lives on.” She wondered vaguely what would live on when she was gone.
The first thing she did when she had been shown to a neat and comfortable room was strange. Opening her bag, she took out a cardboard folder tied with a ribbon. From this folder she selected a dozen pictures. These she proceeded to thumbtack, one by one, to the wall directly under a mellow light.
After that, without further unpacking, she dropped into a chair and sat for a long time looking at those pictures through moist eyelashes.
The house with the broad lawn and tall shade trees about it was her home. The tall, distinguished looking man with one empty sleeve was her dad. The picture done in color was her college chum. And the grinning young man in the uniform of a private was Bill—just plain Bill.
There were other pictures but these were the ones that counted most. They had adorned the walls of her room at college for a long time. When you bunk in a stable—even a glorious, glorified stable—with a hundred other girls, you don’t thumbtack your pictures to the wall. It isn’t allowed. Besides, it would be silly.