“Oh yes; there’s enough going on, and my wife and me we could enjoy it first rate.”
“If the young lady could?” I ventured, with a smile of sympathetic intelligence.
“Well, yes. You see, we don’t know anybody, and I suppose we didn’t take that into account. Well, I suppose it’s like this: they thought it would be easy to get acquainted in the hotel, and commence having a good time right away. I don’t know; my wife had the idea when they cooked it up amongst ’em that she was to come with us. But I swear I don’t know how to go about it. I can’t seem to make up my mouth to speak to folks first; and then you can’t tell whether a man ain’t a gambler, or on for the horse-races anyway. So we’ve been here a week now, and you’re the first ones we’ve spoken to besides the waiters since we came.”
I couldn’t help laughing, their experience was so exactly as I had imagined it when I first saw this disconsolate party. In my triumph at my own penetration, I would not have had their suffering in the past one pang the less; but the simple frankness of his confession fixed me in the wish that the future might be brighter for them. I thought myself warranted by my wife’s imprudence in taking a step toward their further intimacy on my own account, and I said:
“Well, perhaps I ought to tell you that I haven’t been inside the Saratoga Club or bet on the races since I’ve been here. That’s my name in full,”—and I gave him my card,—“and I’m in the literary line; that is, I’m the editor of a magazine in New York—the Every Other Week.”
“Oh yes; I know who you are,” said my companion, with my card in his hand. “Fact is, I was round at your place this morning trying to get rooms, and the clerk told me all about you from my description. I felt as mean as pu’sley goin’; seemed to be takin’ kind of an advantage of you.”
“Not at all; it’s a public house,” I interrupted; but I thought I should be stronger with Mrs. March if I did not give the fact away to her, and I resolved to keep it.
“But they couldn’t rest easy till I tried, and I was more than half glad there wasn’t any rooms.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry,” I said; and I indulged a real regret from the vantage I had. “It would have been very pleasant to have you there. Perhaps later—we shall be giving up our rooms at the end of the month.”
“No,” he said, with a long breath. “If I’ve got to leave ’em, I guess it’ll be just as well to leave ’em where they’re acquainted with the house anyway.” His remark betrayed a point in his thinking which had not perhaps been reached in his talk with the ladies. “It’s a quiet place, and they’re used to it; and I guess they wouldn’t want to stay through the rest of the month, quite. I don’t believe my wife would, anyway.”