ten o'clock
`` Where to , miss ? '' `` Hudson Hotel , '' she said , sitting back against the leather tufting . They rattled over the cobblestones until her very flesh shivered , and she bit into her tongue and her hands bounced as they lay in her lap , and , trying to peer out of the window , she bumped her head , and finally sat back , forced to be inert as she bumbled over the deep narrow streets of lower Manhattan which at night become deserted runways to slaughter , ghostly with the silent thunder of a million stampeding feet . It was ten o'clock when they finally drew up at the side entrance of the hotel in a street disappointingly narrow , but which seemed to burst , just a few feet beyond , into a wildly tossed stream of light , pedestrians , and , above all , a momentum of traffic that was like the fast toss of a mountain stream . The cab fare was overwhelmingly large . Her bags disappeared ; she followed them , immediately enveloped in an atmosphere of upholstery , mosaic floors that seemed to slide from under her , palms that leaned out of corners , crystal chandeliers , uniforms , rivulets of music . She had dined upon several occasions at the Planters ' Hotel in St. Louis , and had once spent a night at the Briggs House , Chicago , and the Hotel Imperial at Niagara Palls , and had objected when her father signed , `` B. T. Becker , Wife and Daughter , '' taking the pen to write out her own name boldly under his , and upon all summer excursions had taken upon herself the ordering of the family meals .