While he put a few necessary articles in the valise he wondered where he should go, never dropping the thought that he must go somewhere. The remainder of his wardrobe, including the brilliant dressing-gown, he packed in a trunk and locked it.
He rang the bell, and when the waiter came up asked for the landlady, Mrs. Semmes. The waiter thought that it was not too late to see her in her own parlor, and lingered, with his hand on his chin and his eyes on the valise.
“Jem,” said Osgood, “I have left some boots in the closet, and some shirts in the drawers, which are at your service.”
The alacrity with which Jem changed his attitude and expression struck Osgood with a sense of pain. “How horribly selfish servants are!” he thought, taking his way down stairs. Mrs. Semmes hoped there was no trouble, and asked him to be seated. He looked at her earnestly; she was the only one to say farewell to. Never had he looked Mrs. Semmes in the face before; he had only seen the hand into which he had placed the price of his board.
“I came to tell you, Mrs. Semmes, that I am about to leave town for the present. Will you allow my trunk to remain here? If I do not return in a year and a day, break it open.”
Mrs. Semmes promised to keep the trunk; took some money due her; wondered at his going away at that time of year, and asked him his destination.
“I think I shall go to Canada,” he answered, vaguely.
“There must be snow there, by the accounts.”
“Where shall I go?” he was about to say, but checked himself.
“If you were going East,” she continued, “you would find the ground bare enough, especially in the neighborhood of the sea: the sea-winds melt the snow almost as soon as it falls.”