“Do you like it?” asked Burnamy, as if he owned the place, and Mrs. March saw how simple-hearted he was in his reticence, after all.  She was ready to bless him when they reached the hotel and found that his interest had got them the only rooms left in the house.  This satisfied in her the passion for size which is at the bottom of every American heart, and which perhaps above all else marks us the youngest of the peoples.  We pride ourselves on the bigness of our own things, but we are not ungenerous, and when we go to Europe and find things bigger than ours, we are magnanimously happy in them.  Pupp’s, in its altogether different way, was larger than any hotel at Saratoga or at Niagara; and when Burnamy told her that it sometimes fed fifteen thousand people a day in the height of the season, she was personally proud of it.

She waited with him in the rotunda of the hotel, while the secretary led March off to look at the rooms reserved for them, and Burnamy hospitably turned the revolving octagonal case in the centre of the rotunda where the names of the guests were put up.  They were of all nations, but there were so many New Yorkers whose names ended in berg, and thal, and stern, and baum that she seemed to be gazing upon a cyclorama of the signs on Broadway.  A large man of unmistakable American make, but with so little that was of New England or New York in his presence that she might not at once have thought him American, lounged toward them with a quill toothpick in the corner of his mouth.  He had a jealous blue eye, into which he seemed trying to put a friendly light; his straight mouth stretched into an involuntary smile above his tawny chin-beard, and he wore his soft hat so far back from his high forehead (it showed to the crown when he took his hat off) that he had the effect of being uncovered.

At his approach Burnamy turned, and with a flush said:  “Oh!  Let me introduce Mr. Stoller, Mrs. March.”

Stoller took his toothpick out of his mouth and bowed; then he seemed to remember, and took off his hat.  “You see Jews enough, here to make you feel at home?” he asked; and he added:  “Well, we got some of ’em in Chicago, too, I guess.  This young man”—­he twisted his head toward Burnamy—­“found you easy enough?”

“It was very good of him to meet us,” Mrs. March began.  “We didn’t expect—­”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Stoller, putting his toothpick back, and his hat on.  “We’d got through for the day; my doctor won’t let me work all I want to, here.  Your husband’s going to take the cure, they tell me.  Well, he wants to go to a good doctor, first.  You can’t go and drink these waters hit or miss.  I found that out before I came.”

“Oh, no!” said Mrs. March, and she wished to explain how they had been advised; but he said to Burnamy: 

“I sha’n’t want you again till ten to-morrow morning.  Don’t let me interrupt you,” he added patronizingly to Mrs. March.  He put his hand up toward his hat, and sauntered away out of the door.