The next morning, Sunday, we had eggs for breakfast. Unfortunately I was the first at table, so did not have the advantage of advice from my table-mates. I ordered it medium-boiled. When peeled, it closely resembled a golf ball that had been lying in the wet grass for a couple of months. That proved to be an intensely hot day, but sitting on the roof-garden or the piazzas was impossible because of a virulent stench.
“It’s from the dumping-plant, where the city garbage is loaded on scows to take out to sea,” a woman who saw me hurry down from the roof-garden explained. “The wind always blows from that direction hot days.”
Being too dark to read or write in my room, I spent the morning straightening out my few belongings. On hanging the suit in which I had set out on my adventure and my coat in the closet, it seemed so full that I decided to fold my nightie and place it under my pillow.
A few minutes later a gaily frescoed individual, who informed me that she was the assistant housekeeper, entered to exchange my Peter Pan towel for a fresh one. Evidently she realized that my little pancake of a pillow had risen too high and too suddenly, for she jerked it up.
“There!” she exclaimed, pointing a stubby red finger at my nightie. “Night-clothes are to be hung in the closet. Don’t you see the rules?”—pointing at a long, printed page tacked against the inside of my door. “Can’t you read? You can’t keep nothin’ under your piller nor under your bed neither.”
Here, going down on her knees, she peered carefully under the bed; then, still kneeling, she passed her eyes over every square inch of the four shiny yellow walls. When they encountered a paper bag hanging on a nail to one side of the narrow chiffonier, she scuffled angrily to her feet.
“I’m gonna report you,” she cried, glaring at me. “It’s positive against our rules—guests drivin’ nails in the walls. This ain’t no tenement. Seems like you can’t teach some folks nothin’.”
“Suppose you look at that nail,” I advised her, as I removed the paper bag. “You can see for yourself that it has been here since before the walls were painted. It is covered with the same coat of yellow paint. If you draw it out ever so carefully it would mar the wall.”