“Well, I suppose as much as anywhere. I don’t know about them big resorts in the East, but there’s enough money spent here. Goodness! People come and take whole soots of rooms at these big hotels. You see some mighty rich people here.”
Franklin and I availed ourselves of the cafeteria system of this place to serve ourselves and be in the life. We walked along the beach looking at the lights come out on the hotel verandas and in the pavilions and under the trees. We walked under these same trees and watched the lovers courting, and noted the old urge of youth and blood on every hand. There was dancing in one place, and at a long pier reaching out into the bay on the landward side, a large ferry steamer was unloading hundreds more. Finally at ten o’clock we returned Sanduskyward, listening to the splash of the waves on the shore, and observing the curious cloud formations which hung overhead, interspersed with stars. In them once I saw a Russian moujik’s head with the fur cap pulled low over the ears—that immemorial cap worn by the Assyrians and Chaldeans. Again I saw an old hag pursuing a wisp of cloud that looked like a fleeing hare, and then two horsemen riding side by side in the sky. Again I saw a whale and a stag, and finally a great hand, its fingers outspread—a hand that seemed to be reaching up helplessly and as if for aid.
The night was so fine that I would have counseled riding onward toward Fort Wayne, but when we reached Sandusky again and saw its pleasant streets and a clean-looking hotel, we concluded that we would stay by the ills we knew rather than to fly toward others that we knew not of.
CHAPTER XXXI
WHEN HOPE HOPPED HIGH
It is Anatole France, I think, who says somewhere that “robbery is to be condoned; the result of robbery respected.” Even so, listen to this story. We came into this hotel at eleven P. M. or thereabouts. Franklin, who is good at bargaining, or thinks he is, sallied up to the desk and asked for two rooms with bath, and an arrangement whereby our chauffeur could be entertained for less—the custom. There was a convention of some kind in town—traveling salesmen in certain lines, I believe—and all but one room in this hotel, according to the clerk, was taken. However, it was a large room—very, he said, with three beds and a good bath. Would we take that? If so, we could have it, without breakfast, of course, for three dollars.
“Done,” said Franklin, putting all three names on the registry.
It was a good room, large and clean, with porcelain bath of good size. We arose fairly early and breakfasted on the usual hotel breakfast. I made the painful mistake of being betrayed by the legend “pan fish and fried mush” from taking ham and eggs.
After our breakfast we came downstairs prepared to pay and depart, when, in a polite voice—oh, very suave—the day clerk, a different one from him of the night—announced to Franklin, who was at the window, “Seven-fifty, please.”
“How do you make that out?” inquired Franklin, taken aback.
“Three people in one room at three dollars a day each (two dollars each for the night)—six dollars. Breakfast, fifty cents each, extra—one-fifty. Total, seven-fifty.”