Explore "Indiscretions of Archie" by P. G. Wodehouse on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The lobby of the Cosmopolis Hotel was a favourite stamping ground of Mr. Daniel Brewster, its proprietor. He liked to wander about there, keeping a paternal eye on things, rather in the manner of the Jolly Innkeeper (hereinafter to be referred to as Mine Host) of the old-fashioned novel. Customers who, hurrying in to dinner, tripped over Mr. Brewster, were apt to mistake him for the hotel detective -- for his eye was keen and his aspect a trifle austere -- but, nevertheless, he was being as jolly an innkeeper as he knew how. His presence in the lobby supplied a personal touch to the Cosmopolis which other New York hotels lacked, and it undeniably made the girl at the bookstall extraordinarily civil to her clients, which was all to the good.
Most of the time Mr. Brewster stood in one spot and just looked thoughtful; but now and again he would wander to the marble slab behind which he kept the desk clerk and run his eye over the register, to see who had booked rooms -- like a child examining the stocking on Christmas morning to ascertain what Santa Claus had brought him.