GRINNIDGE: "How long have you been waiting here?"

RANSOM: "Ten minutes--ten years. How should I know?"

GRINNIDGE: "Well, I don't know who else should. Get back to-day?"

RANSOM: "Last night."

GRINNIDGE: "Well, take off your coat, and pull up to the register,
and warm your poor feet." He puts his hand out over the register.
"Confound it! somebody's got the register open in the next room! You
see, one pipe comes up from the furnace and branches into a V just
under the floor, and professes to heat both rooms. But it don't.
There was a fellow in there last winter who used to get all my heat.
Used to go out and leave his register open, and I'd come in here just
before dinner and find this place as cold as a barn. We had a
running fight of it all winter. The man who got his register open
first in the morning got all the heat for the day, for it never
turned the other way when it started in one direction. Used to
almost suffocate--warm, muggy days--maintaining my rights. Some
piano-pounder in there this winter, it seems. Hear? And she hasn't
lost any time in learning the trick of the register. What kept you
so late in the country?"

RANSOM, after an absent-minded pause: "Grinnidge, I wish you would
give me some advice."

GRINNIDGE: "You can have all you want of it at the market price."

RANSOM: "I don't mean your legal advice."