They had not gone often to New York since their wedding journey, but they had gone often enough to have noted the change from the lunch-counter to the lunch-basket brought in the train, from which you could subsist with more ease and dignity, but seemed destined to a superabundance of pickles, whatever you ordered.
They thought well of themselves now that they could be both critical and tolerant of flavors not very sharply distinguished from one another in their dinner, and they lingered over their coffee and watched the autumn landscape through the windows.
"Not quite so loud a pattern of calico this year," he said, with patronizing forbearance toward the painted woodlands whirling by.
"Do you see how the foreground next the train rushes from us and the background keeps ahead of us, while the middle distance seems stationary?
I don't think I ever noticed that effect before.

There ought to be something literary in it: retreating past and advancing future and deceitfully permanent present--something like that ?" His wife brushed some crumbs from her lap before rising.

"Yes.

You mustn't waste any of these ideas now." "Oh no; it would be money out of Fulkerson's pocket." VII.
They went to a quiet hotel far down-town, and took a small apartment which they thought they could easily afford for the day or two they need spend in looking up a furnished flat.

They were used to staying at this hotel when they came on for a little outing in New York, after some rigid winter in Boston, at the time of the spring exhibitions.