Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/134

curiosity, too. He used to sit down at the table with us sometimes, late in the evening, and ask about our work, and where we lived, and what Mrs. Vesey was like, and what time of day we were home, and all sorts of fool questions like that.

"Well, the time went on, and it began to be cold weather. I noticed this sooner than the other fellows, I think, because whereas most of them went to offices during the daytime, I stayed home at Mrs. Vesey's, trying to write in my narrow coop of a top bedroom. You know how depressing an instrument a typewriter is when your hands are cold. I haven't forgotten some dreary vigils I had up there, struggling to write short stories. Sometimes I used to give it up weakly, and go round to Larsen's, where it was always warm and cozy, to drink herb coffee and eat those brittle Swedish biscuits and chat with Gloria. I used to complain to her about the cold in my room, and she would laugh and say that I just ought to try a winter in Sweden.

"'Swedish exercises,' she would say. 'That's the thing to stir up your blood! They'll keep you warm.'

"And then, in her enchanting way, she would tell me a new one, and if there were no customers (as there generally weren't in the middle of the