powerful-wristed youth happily playing, "You'll Come Back and Hang
Around," with heavily accented rag-time, on an upright piano.

"About seventy girls board on this boat. That young lady going into the
pantry now is a stenographer--such a bright girl."

Absorbed in the spectacle of a hotel freedom which permitted a guest to
go to a pantry at will, whatever the force of her brightness, I followed
Miss McCray about the boat. It was as if the hotel belonged to the girls,
while in the Christian homes it had been as if everything belonged, not
to the girls, but to benevolent though carefully possessive Christians.
Miss McCray praised highly the manager and his wife.

"About twenty men and boys stay on a yacht anchored right out here. They
board on this boat, and go to their own boat when the whistle blows at
ten o'clock," she continued, leading me to the smoking-room, where she
introduced a number of very young gentlemen reading magazines and
knocking about gutturally together. They, too, seemed proud of their
position as boarders, proud of the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel. They were
nice, boyish young fellows, who might have been young mechanicians.

She showed me the top deck with especial satisfaction as we came out into
the fresh, rainy air. The East River shipping and an empty recreation
pier rose black on one side, with the water sparkling in jetted
reflection between; and on the other quivered all the violet and silver
lights of the city. There were perhaps half a dozen tents pitched on
deck.

"Some of the girls sleep outdoors up here," said Miss McCray in her
gentle voice. "They like it so, they do it all winter long. Have plenty