"Front! Show the lady up to nineteen."

Emma McChesney took three steps in the direction of the stairway
toward which the boy was headed with her bags. Then she stopped.

"Wait a minute, boy," she said, pleasantly enough; and walked back to
the desk. She eyed the clerk, a half-smile on her lips, one arm, in
its neat tailored sleeve, resting on the marble, while her right
forefinger, trimly gloved, tapped an imperative little tattoo.
(Perhaps you think that last descriptive sentence is as unnecessary as
it is garbled. But don't you get a little picture of her--trim, taut,
tailored, mannish-booted, flat-heeled, linen-collared, sailor-hatted?)

"You've made a mistake, haven't you?" she inquired.

Mistake?" repeated the clerk, removing his eyes from their loving
contemplation of his right thumb-nail. "Guess not."

"Oh, think it over," drawled Emma McChesney. "I've never seen
nineteen, but I can describe it with both eyes shut, and one hand tied
behind me. It's an inside room, isn't it, over the kitchen, and just
next to the water butt where the maids come to draw water for the
scrubbing at 5 A.M.? And the boiler room gets in its best bumps for
nineteen, and the patent ventilators work just next door, and there's
a pet rat that makes his headquarters in the wall between eighteen and
nineteen, and the housekeeper whose room is across the hail is
afflicted with a bronchial cough, nights. I'm wise to the brand of
welcome that you fellows hand out to us women on the road. This is new
territory for me--my first trip West. Think it over. Don't--er--say,
sixty-five strike you as being nearer my size?"