“You can have the whole first floor,” he said, and he added, with a half sob, “and the second, too, if you like.”
I could not help contrasting his manner with what it was in the old days, when the mere mention of a room used to throw him into a fit of passion, and when he used to tell me that I could have a cot on the roof till Tuesday, and after that, perhaps, a bed in the stable.
Things had changed indeed.
“Can I get breakfast in the grill room?” I inquired of the melancholy clerk.
He shook his head sadly.
“There is no grill room,” he answered. “What would you like?”
“Oh, some sort of eggs,” I said, “and—”
The clerk reached down below his desk and handed me a hard-boiled egg with the shell off.
“Here’s your egg,” he said. “And there’s ice water there at the end of the desk.”
He sat back in his chair and went on reading.