“You bet. That’s a fact,” they
observed, and passed on to lighter topics. They
rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire-mileage, oil-stocks,
fishing, and the prospects for the wheat-crop in Dakota.
But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time.
He was a veteran traveler and free of illusions.
Already he had asserted that he was “an old
he-one.” He leaned forward, gathered in
their attention by his expression of sly humor, and
grumbled, “Oh, hell, boys, let’s cut out
the formality and get down to the stories!”
They became very lively and intimate.
Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward
on the long seat, unbuttoned their vests, thrust their
feet up on the chairs, pulled the stately brass cuspidors
nearer, and ran the green window-shade down on its
little trolley, to shut them in from the uncomfortable
strangeness of night. After each bark of laughter
they cried, “Say, jever hear the one about—”
Babbitt was expansive and virile. When the train
stopped at an important station, the four men walked
up and down the cement platform, under the vast smoky
train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under the elevated
footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef,
in the mystery of an unknown city. They strolled
abreast, old friends and well content. At the
long-drawn “Alllll aboarrrrrd”—like
a mountain call at dusk—they hastened back
into the smoking-compartment, and till two of the
morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp
with cigar-smoke and laughter. When they parted
they shook hands, and chuckled, “Well, sir,
it’s been a great session. Sorry to bust
it up. Mighty glad to met you.”
Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman
berth, shaking with remembrance of the fat man’s
limerick about the lady who wished to be wild.
He raised the shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked
between his head and the skimpy pillow, looking out
on the sliding silhouettes of trees, and village lamps
like exclamation-points. He was very happy.
They had four hours in New York between trains.
The one thing Babbitt wished to see was the Pennsylvania
Hotel, which had been built since his last visit.
He stared up at it, muttering, “Twenty-two hundred
rooms and twenty-two hundred baths! That’s
got everything in the world beat. Lord, their
turnover must be—well, suppose price of
rooms is four to eight dollars a day, and I suppose
maybe some ten and—four times twenty-two
hundred-say six times twenty-two hundred—well,
anyway, with restaurants and everything, say summers
between eight and fifteen thousand a day. Every
day! I never thought I’d see a thing like
that! Some town! Of course the average fellow
in Zenith has got more Individual Initiative than
the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it to New
York. Yes, sir, town, you’re all right—some
ways. Well, old Paulski, I guess we’ve
seen everything that’s worth while. How’ll
we kill the rest of the time? Movie?”
