Page:Behind the scenes, or, Thirty years a slave and four years in the White House.djvu/277

Rh delivered until to-night. Come in here, until I find out about your room;" and she led me into the office.

The clerk, like all modern hotel clerks, was exquisitely arrayed, highly perfumed, and too self-important to be obliging, or even courteous. "This is the woman I told you about. I want a good room for her," Mrs. Lincoln said to the clerk. "We have no room for her, madam," was the pointed rejoinder. "But she must have a room. She is a friend of mine, and I want a room for her adjoining mine." "We have no room for her on your floor."

"That is strange, sir. I tell you that she is a friend of mine, and I am sure you could not give a room to a more worthy person." "Friend of yours, or not, I tell you we have no room for her on your floor. I can find a place for her on the fifth floor."

"That, sir, I presume, will be a vast