- ingly at Mr. Meredith's hook, empty now, with no
satin-lined overcoat for him to nestle lovingly against for a blissful second, and then he went out into the hall under the huge dome. No one, of course, observed a mere page boy, but Jamie felt, as he clicked his hurrying little heels across the marble floors, that something was about to poke him in his cold, unprotected back—the fear of a rear attack that boyhood inherits from its far-distant savage ancestry. Jamie didn't take the elevator, or the grand staircase, but reached the main floor by leaping two steps at a time down a narrow side stairway, unused and dark.
Then he flew out of the east entrance, ran down the wide walk and on up Capitol Avenue for four long blocks—ran as fast as he could pump his little short legs to the hotel where he knew Mr. Meredith lived when he was at the capital. But Jamie had no hope of finding him there that afternoon. He went to the hotel simply because he did not know where else to go—that was all. Rushing into the hotel and up to the clerk's desk, he put his chin over its edge and, as the clerk leaned down with his face almost in Jamie's face, the boy panted:
