The lady produced another
key, with which the man belonging to the lift unlocked the door of the
brass cage which guarded it.
"You must find strangers very dishonest, madam," said the Senator
courteously as we stepped inside, "to render such a precaution
necessary."
But before we arrived at the third floor we were convinced that it was
unnecessary. It was not an elevator that the most burglarious would have
cared to take away.
So many Americans surrounded the breakfast table next morning that we
might almost have imagined ourselves in Chicago. A small, young priest
with furtive brown eyes cowered at one of the side tables, and at
another a broad-shouldered, unsmiling lady, dressed in black, with brows
and a slight moustache to match, dispensed food to a sallow and
shrinking object of preternaturally serious aspect who seemed to be her
husband, and a little boy who kept an anxious eye on them both. They
were French, too, but all the people who sat up and down the long middle
table belonged to the United States of America. They were there in
groups and in families representing different localities and different
social positions--as momma said, you had only to look at their shoulder
seams; and each group or family received the advances of the next with
the polite tolerance, head a little on one side, which characterises us
when we don't know each other's business standing or church membership;
but the tide of conversation which ebbed and flowed had a flavour which
made the table a geographical unit.
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