"Or a Christmas card," says Vee. "Look at this old door with the brass knocker and the green fan-light above. Isn't that Colonial, though?"
"It's an old-timer, all right," says I. "Hello! Here's a place worth rememberin'—the Woman's Exchange. Now I'll know where to go in case I should want to swap you off."
For which crack I gets shoved into a snowdrift.
It ain't until afternoon that I'm struck with the fact that neither of us knows a soul up here. Course, the landlord nods pleasant to me, and I'd talked to the young room clerk a bit, and the bell-hops had all smiled friendly, specially them I'd fed quarters to. But by then I was feelin' sort of folksy, so I begun takin' notice of the other guests and plannin' who I should get chummy with first.
I drifts over by the fireplace, where two substantial old boys are toastin' their toes and smokin' their cigars.
"Snappy brand of weather they pass out up here, eh?" I throws off, pullin' up a rocker.
They turn, sort of surprised, and give me the once-over deliberate, after which one of them, a gent with juttin' eyebrows, clears his throat and remarks, "Quite bracing, indeed."
Then he hitches around until I'm well out of view, and says to the other:
"As I was observing, an immediate readjustment of international trade balances is inevitable. European bankers are preparing for it. We are not. Only last month one of the Barings cabled——"
I'll admit my next stab at bein' sociable was kind of feeble. In front of the desk is a group of three gents, one of 'em not over fifty or so; but when I edges up close enough to hear what the debate is about, I finds it has something to do with a scheme for revivin' Italian opera in Boston, and I backs off so sudden I almost bumps into a hook-beaked old dame who is waddlin' up to the letter-box.