"Why, Jeff," he says, "if you think this is a fine lay-out you should see some of the other _suites_ they have here."
"I ain't cravin' to see 'em. I done seen sweetness 'nuff ez 'tis. They su'ttinly is usin' us noble."
He says they should ought to use us noble seeing what the price is they charges us. He says:
"Do you know what I'm paying here for the accommodations for the two of us? I'm paying twenty-seven dollars and a half."
I says to him if that's the case he better let me clear out of there right brisk and skirmish round and find me a respectable colored boarding house somewheres handy by, so's to cut down the expenses, because, I don't care what anybody says, twenty-seven dollars and a half is a sight of money to be paying out every week.
"Twenty-seven and a half a week--huh! Remember, Jeff, we are in New York now where everything runs high. This stands me twenty-seven and a half a day."
"_Who-ee!_" I says. "No wonder they kin purvide fancy garments fur all the hands an' buy solid gold bars fur the cage whar they keeps them clerks penned up. Mr. Dallas," I says, "it shore is behoovin' on us to eat hearty th'ee times a day in awder fur to git our money's worth whilst we's boardin' yere."
He says, though, for me not to overtax my appetite just on that account because the eating is besides; he says we pays twenty-seven dollars and a half a day just for our rooms.
"Mr. Dallas, let's git out of yere befo' they begins chargin' us up fur the air we breathes!"
"You're too late with your suggestion; they do charge us for that. The air is all cleaned and cooled before it comes into these rooms."
Then I knows for sure he is burlesqueing me. Who's going to hold the air whilst they cleans it? And the Good Lord Himself can't chill air to order in the middle of a August hot spell, let alone a lot of folks running a hotel--can He? I asks Mr. Dallas them questions.
But he just laughs and say to me that there's not no need to worry, because he won't be staying there only just a day or so. He says Mr. H. C. Raynor, which is his principalest friend in New York and the one which he's thinking about maybe going into business with, has done devised for us to hire some ready-furnished quarters still higher up-town. He says something about 'em being Sublette quarters in a department-house; leastwise that's what I makes out of what he says. That's news to me in more ways than one because, in the first place, I didn't know any of the Sublettes, which is a very plentiful white connection in our county, had done moved up here to live, and in the second place it seemed like to me there just naturally couldn't be no more up-town to New York City than what I already had done observed coming from the train.