"There, I guess that 'll do for one while," she said, arranging her
tumbled hair; "but there's more kisses where that came from, for
both of you if you want 'em. Coots!"
Once, when Lemuel was little, he had a fever, and he was always
seeming to glide down the school-house stairs without touching the
steps with his feet. He remembered this dream now, when he reached
the street; he felt as if he had floated down on the air; and
presently he was back in his little den at the hotel, he did not
know how. He ran the elevator up and down for the ladies who called
him from the different floors, and he took note of the Sunday
difference in their toilet as they passed in to tea; but in the same
dreamy way.
After the boarders had supped, he went in as usual with Mrs.
Harmon's nephew, less cindery than on week-days, from the cellar,
and Mrs. Harmon, silken smooth for her evening worship at the shrine
of a popular preacher from New York. The Sunday evening before, she
had heard an agnostic lecture in the Boston Theatre, and she said
she wished to compare notes. Her tranquillity was unruffled by the
fact that the head-waitress had left, just before tea; she presumed
they could get along just as well without her as with her: the
boarders had spoiled her, anyway. She looked round at Lemuel's face,
which beamed with his happiness, and said she guessed she should
have to get him to open the dining-room doors, and seat the
transients the next few days, till she could get another head-
waitress.
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