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It was because so many people there and in the town and in London, knew her, that she was able to take the old house which was once the maltster's, and have it done up nicely, and the great long room that had been the front office and sample-room turned into a school-room, and the pretty little parlour fitted with French windows, that it might open to the garden full of rose-bushes and standard apple-trees, and with its red brick walls covered with plums and jessamine.
I want to contribute five dollars toward the fund myself; but I'm here to confess to you frankly that I wouldn't like to see the money throwed away. The great majority of them meeting-tents on the market are simply made to sell and not for hard use. They look all right in the sample-room, but they are full of starch to give 'em body, and when they get wet they are about as porous as a fish-net."
I remembered that when I was conveyed up to the sample-room that morning my desk had been open. Nothing, therefore, could have been more simple than to secrete the key there during my absence, and so lay up against me a silent accuser which it would be far harder to gainsay than a talking one.
Will made a noise resembling an affirmative, and as soon as he got his breath explained that travelling men generally wanted a sort of a showroom next to theirs and that that was called a sample-room, too. "But I'm not a travelling man," said The Mysterious Stranger. "So I shall have as little use for the one as the other." "Then the room on the third floor'll do for you," said Will.
"No message for Miss Donovan up to that time?" "No." "You left the door unlocked?" "Sure; them New York fellers was both out. I oughter waited till they come in, maybe, but I was plum' tired out." "When did they come back?" "Oh, 'bout midnight, I reckon. Bill Lacy an' Matt Moore was along with 'em. They didn't disturb me none; just went inter the sample-room, an' slept on the floor.
Not a word does he say about the expensive cigars he smokes, the wines he drinks; about his frequent visits to the sample-room, and about the liberality with which he treats his friends there; about the sumptuous dinners he takes at noon in the down-town restaurant, while wife and children content themselves at home with a frugal lunch; about the money he loses at the card table, or in his bets on the games and races and politics.
He became positively hopeful that this might be the case, when nearly a month had passed, and no further harm had come to his "lamb." One morning Bella Jones, who ordinarily kept rather fashionable hours, came panting up the hill, the first to arrive. She was a dressy young person, whose father kept a "sample-room."
"If you want to see him so privately as all that," said I, "take him up to the sample-room. No one will disturb you there." He gave me one look of hatred and menace, and then said to Masham, "We must fix another time, Masham; we can't go into the matter now." "Eh?" said Masham, who had hitherto stood by in silence. "What do you say? If we can't do it now, we won't do it at all, my boy."
A middle-aged woman with a Jewish cast of features passed through the waiting-room. I knew that she was Huntington's assistant and she was apparently going to his compartment of the sample-room. The fact that she had a Jewish face seemed encouraging. Not that the Jews I had met in business had shown me more leniency or cordiality than the average Gentile.
The place is not natural scenery; it is a junk-shop, a storehouse, a sample-room wherein the elements of natural scenery are to be viewed. It is not an arrangement of effects in accordance with the usual laws of landscape, but an abnormality, a freak of Nature. All these things are to be found elsewhere.
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