Avenue side if possible--and was Mrs. Robert Blake in?"

The lackadaisical young man consulted the register with a disparaging eye.

"Not staying here," Marjorie understood him to remark.

"Oh, it doesn't matter--but about the rooms?"

"Front!" drawled the young man, and several blue-clad bellboys ceased
from lolling on a bench and approached the desk.

"Register here," commanded the clerk, twirling the big book on its
turn-table toward Marjorie so suddenly that she jumped, and laying his
pink-tinted finger on its first blank line.

"No, thank you," she stammered, "I was not to register until my
husband--" and her heart cried out within her for that she was saying
these new, dear words for the first time to so unresponsive a
stranger--"told me not to register until he should come and see that the
rooms were satisfactory. He will be here presently."

"We have no unsatisfactory rooms," was the answer, followed by: "Front
625 and 6," and fresh pages and bellboys fell upon the yellow baggage,
and Marjorie, in a hot confusion of counting her property and wondering
how to resent the young man's impertinence, turned to follow them.

"One moment, madam," the clerk murmured; "name and address, please." The
pages were escaping with the bags, and Mrs. Blake hardly turned as she
answered, according to the habit of her lifetime: