We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in.
"I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too."
The apartment was on the top floor-a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath.
The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles.
The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock.
Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room.
Several old copies of "Town Tattle" lay on the table together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway.
Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog.
A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits-one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon.
Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.