Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/83



HE parlor of the Cottonwood Hotel was in the front of the house, opposite the office. It was a room that was a sort of left-over, suitable for nothing else but a parlor, small and pinched, with two lean windows looking out on a cottonwood tree, the sidewalk and the end of the watering trough. Drummers sometimes used it for a sample room, making it gay with red underwear, silk petticoats, and neckties of assertive hues.

There was a little round table in the middle of the room, with a knitted cord cover; on the table a copy of Gems For. The Fireside, a thick brown book with tinsel lettering, representing Mrs. Cowsgill's sole literary investment during the course of her life; a folding panorama of Niagra Falls; a lamp with a china bowl and festive, pleated shade. There was a sofa which presented disconcerting inequalities, like the carcass of a dead horse; and a chair with spiral springs, upholstered in ingrain carpeting, standing over against the window which gave the best view upon the street. This chair sighed and creaked when sat on, very much like