THERE IS A TIDE

By J. C. SNAITH

THERE IS A TIDE
ARAMINTA
THE VAN ROON
THE COUNCIL OF SEVEN
THE ADVENTUROUS LADY
THE UNDEFEATED
THE SAILOR
THE TIME SPIRIT
THE COMING
ANNE FEVERSHAM

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Publishers New York

THERE IS A TIDE

BY
J. C. SNAITH
AUTHOR OF “THE VAN ROON,” “THE SAILOR,”
“THE UNDEFEATED,” ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: :: MCMXXIV

THERE IS A TIDE

I

SO this was England.

A slight, pretty girl, in a corner seat of the boat express, was looking out of the window. To her everything was new and odd and a face curiously expressive was quick to register its emotions.

All was on a scale so much less than the land from which she had come. The neatly parcelled acres somehow reminded her of Noah’s ark. Farmsteads trim and tiny; amusing hedgerows; the cattle and horses in the fields; the comic little villages, each with its moss-grown church tower peering through the damp mist, were so expected and yet so unnatural to the eye of a stranger that it was rather like a scene in a play.

The girl was in the compartment alone. By her side was a “grip,” cheap looking, battered, with an air of travel; in the rack, above her head, was its fellow with a mackintosh and an umbrella. Like their owner, these articles had a subtle air of the second rate. Yet the girl herself, had she known how to wear her clothes, which were not bad of their kind, had certain points that seemed to promise a way out.

For one thing, she was alive. Grey eyes, shrewd, keen and clear, looking out from under the brim of a hat that had a touch of smartness, seemed to absorb every detail of this film reeled off at the rate of sixty miles an hour. It was like the movies, but less exciting. Not that the traveller craved excitement. This trip to an unknown land was far from being a pleasure jaunt.

So intent were the grey eyes in absorbing a scene which was a good deal below expectation, that they were not content with the window against which her elbow pressed. Now and then they roved to the left across the narrow corridor, for a glimpse of the more distant view. Broadly speaking, this, too, was a washout. The mist, clammy and all-pervading, might have a lot to do with the general effect, but England, so far, was nothing to write home about.

Disappointment already loomed in a receptive mind, when a man appeared in the corridor. He gazed through the glass at the compartment’s sole occupant; then he came in and closed the door carefully. With a quiet air he took a corner seat immediately facing the girl. She had a feeling that she had seen him before; but where or in what circumstances she could not say. Indeed, so vague was her memory that she soon decided it was a mere reaction to the man’s striking personality.

He was not a man to forget. Big, handsome, muscular, clean and trim, he had all the snap of the smart New Yorker. Evidently he went to good tailors and he paid for dressing.

He raised his ten-dollar Stetson with an air of class. “Miss Durrance!”

The girl gave a start and coloured hotly.

“Don’t remember me, eh, Miss Durrance?”

It was clear that she didn’t. But he remembered her, and the calm enforcement of his knowledge in a tone near the familiar flecked the girl’s cheek with a picturesque confusion.

“Can’t say I do.”

At the awkward answer his eyes twinkled into a slow, bright smile. “Myself, I never forget a face or a name.”

The voice sounded oddly familiar, but she could not recall it. Not able to place this man, the effort to do so teased her forehead into a frown.

“My job, you see, to remember folks.”

She half resented the cool laugh. “Not sure I want to remember everybody.”

“I’ll say not. Pikers good and plenty don’t want to remember me.” His tone was jocular, but there was something in it beyond mere banter.

Mame Durrance realised suddenly that she had taken a strong dislike to the man opposite. He realised it, too. The breadth of his smile became aggressive. As her eyes met it they received a challenge which they were too proud to accept. She withdrew them quickly and looked ostentatiously away through the carriage window.

Even the English scene, as much as was visible, could not divert her mind from a gentle snigger that stole upon her ear. Whoever this man was she hoped he would go. But he showed not a sign. Settling into the opposite corner, he sprawled his long legs, brushing her knees as he did so, and finally crossed them. And then, past master of the art of making himself offensive, he began to hum softly, but in a way to keep in the middle of her consciousness.

“Miss Durrance.” The voice was mild but half a sneer was in it.

Somehow “it got her goat” to have his conversation thrust upon her after she had taken pains to let him know that she had no use for it. Anger made her eyes sparkle. “You quit,” she said. “Beat it.”

Rude, certainly, but she meant it to be. But in that art, too, he had nothing to learn. “Now, then, Miss Durrance, come off it.” His laugh was hateful.

One outstanding detail of the compartment there was, which the sharp-eyed traveller had already noted. A metal disc fixed below the luggage rack was within reach. It was adorned by the words, “To communicate with the Attendant, pull the handle.”

On the spur of the moment she half turned and raised her hand. But the voice of the man opposite grew instantly so full of menace that she felt a little frightened.

“Can that, Miss Durrance, or I’ll have to make it hot for you.”

II

THE force of the threat made the girl withdraw her hand. She met the laugh which followed with a look of defiance, but she had not art nor cleverness enough to conceal the fact that she was rattled. Her cheeks grew scarlet. Some very white and even teeth bit savagely into her lower lip.

The man, watching narrowly, was obviously pleased with the effect.

“Got me now, hey, Miss Durrance?”

“I don’t know who you are,” was the answer of Miss Durrance. A brave and steady answer it was. “And I don’t want to know anyway.”

The look in the girl’s eyes, the note in her voice, appeared sharply to recall the man opposite to a sense of his position. After all, it would not do to carry the thing too far. It was as if he suddenly remembered that in an especial degree he was a guardian of the public interest. When he spoke again his voice had consideration, even a certain kindness.

“I’m one of Tillotson’s men.”

Already her startled mind had flown to that conclusion. But neither the man’s change of tone nor her own insight softened the steely hostility of her eyes. She lifted a fighting chin to rake him with a glance of grey fire. “I’m a very respectable girl.” The note was deeper than she had touched yet. “I don’t know you an’ I don’t want to know you. Cops are no class anyway.”

Detective Addelsee, an eminent member of a highly specialised calling, was a long way from being a fool. He was growing a bit annoyed with himself for his lack of diplomacy. In spite of the girl’s insolence there was something about her that he respected. And, what was just as important, he respected human nature.

He decided to remove the bad impression he had made. “Got in wrong in New York, hey? Over here, ain’t you, to try and change the luck?” His voice was honey now. Its only reward was grim silence.

“Know folks this side?”

The girl looked at Detective Addelsee as if he were dirt. She curled her lip and shook a scornful head.

“Then you better watch your step. London crawls with slick ducks. All sorts, all nations. Up to every game. A bad place, London.”

“If it’s worsen New York, it must be,” conceded Miss Durrance.

“Capital of a free country. Every kind of cag-handed dago lies around loose in London. No place for a lone girl. What’s the stuff you goin’ to pull?”

“That’s my affair.”

Detective Addelsee smiled. He had caught a tartar. But he secretly liked the way she gave it him back. Sand always appealed to him.

“Well, I wish you the best, Miss Durrance.” The voice was official, yet kindness came uppermost. “We’ve nothing against you in New York; but we might have had. You got in with a crooked push. Sorry to have to run you in, but findin’ you on the premises and callin’ yourself the old Haunt’s secretary—she done two goes of time already—how was we to know you were on the level?”

Detective Addelsee meant well, but this display of tact hardly met the case. The grey eyes looked straight through him. He laughed. Serve him right for being clumsy. A regular little hell cat, but he admired her. Most girls of her kind would have been scared to death; he half suspected Miss Durrance was; but she would have died sooner than let him know it.

He liked the cut of her so much that he felt he must try to improve the acquaintance or at least to soften a bad impression. It was a shame to rag her, because to the expert eye she had a look of being up against it. But her pride, her grit, lured him on.

“What you goin’ into, Miss Durrance, in this bum island? The movies?”

“No, I ain’t, Fatty Arbuckle.”

The answer was pat as your hat. Detective Addelsee chuckled.

“Make good on the fillum, a girl of your looks and style.”

She eyed him with cool scorn from under the brim of her hat. “What’s a cheap guy like you know about looks and style?”

Her drawl could only have come from one place on earth, yet each little word had a kick in it quick and vicious, as if from the hind leg of a mule. Detective Addelsee felt this live child of the Middle West had had old Ned for a sire.

He decided now that only one course would be safe. That course was silence. But he had not been so amused in years. The trained professional memory at once recalled the circumstance of their previous meeting. During a raid on the apartment of an old harpy in the neighbourhood of Madison Avenue, who mingled crystal-gazing and fortune-telling with other illegal practices, this girl had been found seated at a typewriter. Investigation proved, however, that she had only held her job a fortnight, and that in the first place her association with such a dangerous person was due to an advertisement she had incautiously answered. Mame Durrance had no difficulty in satisfying the police that she was in total ignorance of the character and history of the notorious Cassandra, alias Zeno, alias Madame Bretsky. All the same the law took pains to impress on the unlucky stenographer that her escape had been narrow. In future she must be more discreet. Innocence as great as hers was apt to incur heavy penalties in such a city as New York.

This episode, as Detective Addelsee was shrewd enough to suspect, had shaken Miss Durrance to her foundations. She was undoubtedly a very respectable girl, the daughter of a simple Iowa farmer, and she had come East to try her luck. Having made a bad break at the start of her career she had decided to seek fortune elsewhere. As William R. Addelsee sat gazing at that fighting profile out of the corner of his left eye, all that he knew about the girl passed in review order through a well-regulated mind. His had been the job of running her in; and of setting her free with a caution. He had caught sight of her again as she left the second-class deck of the Sidonia; he had seen her board the London train. She had the sort of personality not easy to forget. He was interested in this girl for her own sake; but the effort to get into conversation was having no success. The plain truth was, that as far as Miss Durrance was concerned William R. Addelsee was in the discard.

Man of the world, he was amused by her attitude. And he admired her grit. Moreover, he wished her well. That, however, was not easy to convey.

He tried the dulcet and disarming. “You see, Miss Durrance, there’s a bunch of jewel thieves I’m lookin’ for. Scotland Yard has rounded up several. I expect we’ll soon fix the hull circus.”

Miss Durrance, with glacial eye, continued to gaze upon the English scene. “The frozen mit” with a vengeance. Jewel thieves, Scotland Yard, even the brightest of Tillotson’s Agency, haloed with romance for a normal girl, were cutting no ice for the moment. Her pride had been wounded and Detective Addelsee had now to foot the bill.

“You can quit.” A fierce eye pinned him like an arrow. “Cops don’t interest me nothing.”

Silence again. The position was a little humiliating for a man of the world. But this charming spitfire intrigued him. Such a you-be-damnedness quite took the fancy of William R. And the simple independence touched his sense of chivalry.

“If I can help you any I’ll be glad,” he said, humble as pie, yet adroitly raising a hand to hide the laugh in his eyes.

Said Miss Spitfire: “You can beat it. That’ll help me considerable.”

The entrance at this moment of a very small and very polite boy in a strangely bright and extremely tight suit of livery was most opportune. Miss Durrance, who had a fixed determination to see, mark and learn as much as she could in the shortest time possible, was taken at once by this new kind of “bell-hop.”

“Corfee, miss?”

The fair traveller ordered coffee.

Under cover of this diversion William R. suddenly rose. It was the best chance he was likely to get of extricating himself with any sort of dignity from a position which every second grew worse. Nothing doing with this girl, and it was hardly fair to bait her.

As Detective Addelsee, on the heels of the departing boy, moved towards the corridor, he was guilty of one more false step. For he looked back and said: “Good-bye, Miss Durrance, an’ good luck. Be careful this time to get in on the level. But I’ll say London is a tough burg. If any time I can help you any, my name’s Addelsee.” He had the temerity to open a gold cigar case and produce his card. “Scotland Yard, Whitehall, ’ll get me pro tem.” As concrete evidence of good will, Detective Addelsee had the further temerity to write his address upon the card and then with a bland smile to hand it to Miss Durrance.

It was asking for trouble. William R. Addelsee duly received a full ration. Miss Durrance tore the card across. Then she coolly lowered the window and flung out the pieces. “Beat it.” Her face was crimson, her eye ruthless. “And thank you for nix. Cops are no class at all, cops aren’t.”

With a little sigh that was offset by a humorous eye, Detective Addelsee raised the ten-dollar Stetson and followed the bell-boy along the corridor.

III

“SAY, Jackie Coogan, there’s no sugar.”

The polite boy in the button suit gazed at Miss Durrance with mild surprise. New stars constantly swam into his ken. Few had better opportunities than he of testing the simple truth that all sorts of people are needed to make a world. It was this, no doubt, which gave depth to his character. Nothing could have exceeded the grace of his regret for the sugar’s omission and of his promise to bring some.

“That kid’s fierce,” was the mental comment of the traveller to the English scene as this by-product gently closed the door upon her. She had a very keen and lively sense of things and the air and manner of the button suit’s wearer gave it a jolt.

Mame Durrance had certain preconceived ideas about the land she had come to and the odd folks who peopled it, derived in the main from exquisitely humorous writers, usually with Irish names, in her favourite magazines. The British, if not given to mirth themselves, were yet the cause of mirth in others. An obvious back number, the land of George Washington’s forebears was a mass of weary pomposities; it took itself so seriously that it couldn’t raise a smile to save its soul. Up till now she had not had much opportunity of judging it, but the funny little toy of a train in which she was puffing along to London, the tame scenery—what she could see of it—through which it passed, the little cubbyhole in which she sat alone, and the comic child with oiled hair and the manner of a senator who ministered to her wants, all seemed to fit neatly into the theory.

Buttons came back with two small pieces of sugar on a large tray.

“Say, son, does it hurt you any to look that way?”

“Beg your pardon, moddam?”

“All right, Mr. Asquith. On’y my ignorance. You can beat it.”

“Thank you, moddam.” Gently and gravely, without a ghost of a smile, the polite child went.

It was well for Mame Durrance that she had these resources within herself. For at the moment she was not on good terms with life. The railway company’s café au lait, for which it had the nerve to charge a quarter, allowing for the rate of exchange, was not very stimulating either. And Detective Addelsee had shaken her considerably. It surely looked as if the bad luck which had dogged her ever since she left Cowbarn, Iowa, six months ago was going to cling.

It was just six months ago that Mame Durrance had heard the call of ambition in rather strange circumstances. At that time she was a stenographer, earning a few dollars a week, in the office of the Cowbarn Independent. But her Aunt Lou, a sister of her long dead mother, having left her a legacy of two thousand dollars, she at once turned her face east.

These providential dollars must be invested in seeing life. And as native wit had carried her already from a farm kitchen to a stenographer’s chair, she saw no reason why, with money in her purse, that priceless quality should not take her much further. Anyhow it should not be for lack of trying.

She would see life. And in moments of optimism, of which at the start she had many, she went on to describe what she saw. The seeing, alas, proved easier than the writing; or rather the seeing and the writing were easier than to persuade editors “to fall” for her copy. Too many were at the game in the bright city of New York; wisenheimers of both sexes, who instead of coming via Poppa’s pig-farm had been through College.

There was the rub. At Cowbarn the folks didn’t set much store by College. But New York was different.

She was a shrewd girl and it did not take long for her to realise that she was some way behind the game. Human nature was always human nature, when you came down to cases, but there was no denying that she lacked experience. Back of everything was faith in herself, but so wide was the gulf between Cowbarn, Iowa, and the banks of the Hudson that no amount of faith could bridge it.

New York had laughed at her, scorned her, humiliated her deeply and cruelly in more ways than one. She had been advised by newspaper men and also by police officers, professing a disinterested care for rustic ignorance playing a lone hand, to go back to dad and the pigs. These experts were confident that Miss Mame Durrance would get no good of New York.

However, they didn’t know quite so much about Mame Durrance as she knew about herself. She might be down but she was not out. New York had no use for her, but there were other places on the map. For instance, there was London. No, not London, Ontario. As far as the big stuff was concerned, that burg was in the Cowbarn class. London, England, was the spot. She heard that London, England, offered scope for ambition. A few years in Europe might even stop the gaps in her education. It would be like putting herself through College. Hers was a forward-looking mind. And as with set lips and ten fingers on a purse, which in spite of Aunt Lou’s legacy, was not so heavy as her heart, she put off in the Sidonia, she determinedly envisaged the future return of Mame Durrance to the land of her fathers with at least three trunks of real Paris frocks and an English accent. New York would laugh then at the little mucker on the other side of its mouth.

Conflicting opinions had been expressed to Miss Durrance about London. But in her small circle only one was able to speak from first-hand knowledge. Paula Wyse Ling had been there. The others spoke from hearsay, and in one or two cases with a little help from the imagination. But Paula Ling had lived in London a year. This rising columnist, who in the view of Mame was “the goods,” had taken pains to impress the traveller with the stark truth that in the Strand ten cents went no further than they did on Broadway.

Miss Ling had provided the adventurous Mame with the address of a cheap but respectable boarding house in Bloomsbury, where she had stayed herself, where, all things considered, she had received value for her money, and could conscientiously recommend. This enterprising girl had also given the traveller a letter of introduction to the editor of High Life, a weekly journal with an address in Fleet Street, whose ostensible business was to record the doings and sayings of Society with a large S.

As the train sped on the practical Mame began to arrange certain things in her mind. First she opened the small bag which was attached to her wrist, to make sure that the sinews of war were really there; and then, in spite of having made all sorts of calculations already, she did one more sum in her head to find out just how far Aunt Lou’s legacy would carry her. Then she searched for the address of Miss Ling’s boarding house and found it written on an envelope: Beau Sejour, 56 Carvell Street, Bloomsbury, London, W. C. Sole Proprietress Miss Aimee Valance. Terms en pension.

Somehow the information in its fulness and dignity was quite reassuring. Next the pilgrim reverently fingered the sealed envelope which bore the address: Walter Waterson, Esq., c/o High Life, 9 Tun Court, Fleet Street, London, E. C. That was reassuring too. Finally she took in her fingers her own private card and they thrilled as she did so.

Her own private card, which had been engraved just before she had sailed in the Sidonia, had a cosmopolitan air. The world was going to be impressed by it.

Miss Amethyst Du Rance
New York City, U. S. A.
European Correspondent
Cowbarn Independent

The good old Independent looked quite class tucked away in the left-hand corner. But it would have raised a sure smile in New York. That city of four-flushers had taken a lot of pains to impress upon her that Cowbarn, Iowa, was at best a one-horse burg. Perhaps London might not be quite so good at geography. And it might not be quite so set up with itself, although as far as Miss Durrance could learn that was a subject upon which opinion varied.

However, there it was. European Correspondent, Cowbarn Independent. At the sight of the magic words the thoughts of Mame Durrance went rather wistfully back to the hard and dull and uncomfortable place in which she had been born and reared. After all it was home. And even if she was ready to die rather than go back to live there for keeps, it was nothing to be ashamed of, for there was no place like it.

The card looked so well in the hand of Mame that she decided to mail one as soon as she reached London, to Elmer P. Dobree, the young and aspiring editor of the Cowbarn Independent. Good old Elmer P.! It would simply tickle him to pieces. But it would show him the stuff she was made of. He had tried to dissuade her from quitting the safe anchorage of her stool in the Independent office, and when unable to do so, like the sport he was, had told her to send along a weekly letter of New York news, and if able to print it he would pay the top rate of four dollars a thousand words. The Cowbarn Independent was an influential journal, but it had never paid President Harding more than four dollars a thousand words.

Mame took the editor at his word. Sometimes her stuff was printed. Sometimes it wasn’t. But Elmer P.’s kindly interest in her had continued. She had been encouraged to let him know that she was going to Europe and that it would help her considerably if she could depend on his keeping a corner for her London Impressions which she would mail every Friday. Elmer P., before all things the man of affairs and the cautious editor, would not be drawn into a rash promise, but he would do his best. To this end he gave a bit of advice. Let her see to it that the doggone Britishers didn’t take the pep out of her style.

So far Miss Durrance had not realised that she had a style. Anyhow she had never aspired to one. She set down what she saw and heard and read in words that came just naturally. And she had a kind of hunch that the slick-a-lick New Yorkers always found something funny in the way those words came.

The Northwestern express steamed at last into Euston and Mame found herself up against the raw reality of London. From Crewe on the fog had been getting more and more businesslike. By the time the metropolis was reached a very fair imitation of a “London particular” was on the platform to receive her. It was almost the famous “pea-soup” variety, but not quite, which was just as well for Miss Durrance. All traffic would have been at a standstill had she been greeted by that luxury and the troubles of a stranger in a land of strangers increased a hundred-fold. Even as it was, for one used to clear skies the fog was pretty thick, yet the seasoned Cockney would have described it as not a bad day for the time of year.

A Cockney of that genus, in the person of a luggage porter, opened the carriage door. He took charge of Miss Durrance’s gear; also he took charge of Miss Durrance. Slow he was, very slow, to her way of thinking. As yet the alert traveller had not got the tempo of this nation of mossbacks; but the porter, if not exactly an Ariel, was sure as a rock. An earthquake or a landslide would not have hurried him and Mame had the wisdom not to try.

He got her trunk out of the van and put it on a taxi. She gave the address, 56 Carvell Street, Bloomsbury, in a tone of crisp importance; the taximan, who vied with the porter in deference, touched his cap and off they trundled into the fog. For London it was really nothing to speak of, but the acrid vapour caused the eyes of Mame to sting and her throat to tickle; and the combination of raw air, grimy buildings, and an endless mud-churning sea of vehicles, slow-moving and enormous in their bulk and mass, somehow filled her with an odd depression.

In spite of all checks to progress it was not long before they reached Carvell Street. The taxi stopped at 56. Mame sprang out and boldly attacked six bleak stone steps, at the top of which was a door in sore need of paint. Her ring was answered by a comic sort of hired girl, with cap and apron complete. When Mame asked if she might see Miss Valance she was very politely invited to come in.

As Mame went in she made a mental note that her first impression must record the civility of these Londoners. Somehow it had a quality riper and mellower than any brand she had met with on her native continent. Whether it came from the heart or was merely a part of the day’s work of a people addicted to “frills” or just a candid admission of the superiority of the race to which Mame herself belonged, must be left to the future to determine; but so far the critic was pleased with the universal Cockney politeness and she hoped it would pan out as good as it seemed.

The observer had not time to do justice to the small gas-heated anteroom into which she was shown before she was joined by the lady of the house. Miss Valance was a replica of all the Cockney landladies that ever were. Thin, angular, severe, a false front and an invincible red tip to a freely powdered nose masked immense reserves of grim respectability. In the view of Miss Durrance she was “a regular he-one.” All the same the pilgrim declined to be impressed by Miss Valance. It was part of her creed to be impressed by nothing that wore skirts. But had an exception been allowed to this article of faith Miss Valance would sure have put one over on her.

A disappointment was in store. Beau Sejour was full. Miss Valance was awfully sorry but she had no vacancy. This was a blow. Mame’s experience, brief though it was, had been chequered; and she had duly impressed upon herself that if she adventured as far as London, England, she must keep her eyes skinned, for like every cosmopolitan city it was a natural home of the crook. Therefore she informed Miss Valance that she was a very respectable girl and wasn’t going to take a chance on any old boarding house.

From the peak of her own respectability the châtelaine of Beau Sejour applauded Mame’s wisdom. She was helpful besides. Round the corner in Montacute Square was an establishment she could recommend. It was called Fotheringay House and was kept by a lady of the name of Toogood and Miss Valance had heard her well spoken of. She might have a room to let. Anyhow there would be no harm in trying Mrs. Toogood.

Mame felt let down. It was clear from the manner of Miss Valance that she was not very hopeful that the worthy Mrs. Toogood would be able to take her in. However, Mame warmly thanked Miss Valance for her helpfulness; and then buttoning up her coat she made a resolute dive through a passage dark and narrow towards the foggy street.

In the very act of doing so, a pang keen as the blade of a knife drove through Mame. Her luggage! All she had in the world had been left outside in the taxi. The villainous looking guy who had fawned on her with a wolf’s smile as he had taken her trunk, her grip, her mackintosh, her umbrella and herself aboard his machine, had only to trundle away into the fog and she would be left high and dry with the clothes she stood up in. So sharp was the thought that Mame nearly groaned aloud. A fool trick to take a chance of that kind in a foreign city.

Coming over in the Sidonia she had read in the New York Herald of a girl who had just arrived in Paris having done what she had just done; and the girl had never seen her luggage again. And here was Mame Durrance, fed to the teeth with wise resolutions, walking into a trap with open eyes!

However, the taxi stood by the kerb just as she had left it, with her box strapped on to the front. Twopences were being registered by the meter at an alarming rate while the driver was placidly dozing. But the relief of Miss Durrance was considerable as she jumped in, after ordering Jehu, who was much less of a bandit than he looked, to trek round the corner into Montacute Square as far as Fotheringay House.

La pension Toogood was curiously like Beau Sejour, except that it had five stone steps instead of six and that one of its area railings was missing. For the rest it was able to muster a similar air of tired respectability. Painted over the fanlight of the front door, in letters that once had been white, was the historical name Fotheringay House, yet even this did not cause the mansion to look inspiring. But Mame, obsessed by the knowledge that she was literally burning money, did not pause to study details.

As she sprang out of the taxi and ran up the steps of Fotheringay House she hoped that this time she would meet better luck.

A hired girl, the twin in every detail of the slave of Beau Sejour, opened the door. Miss Durrance was in a hurry, but she could not help being amused and interested. It was her attitude to life to be amused and interested; but then who would not have been with such an apron and such a cap, with such prim politeness, with such a way of speaking? Evidently the Britishers had standardised the hired girl. She might have been a flivver or a motor cycle.

The theory applied with equal force to the London landlady. Mrs. Toogood was Miss Valance over again. But if anything, she was raised to a slightly higher power. The same dignity, the same wariness, the same ironclad gentility; but she was a widow with two children, whereas Miss Valance was a spinster with none. Her attributes, therefore, were fuller and firmer, a little more clearly defined. Mame did not make the comparison, but it was the difference between the Barbizon school and Picasso or Augustus John.

With the taxi outside ticking off twopences with quiet fury Mame felt she was getting down to the real meaning of her favourite maxim, Time is Money. She cut out, therefore, all preliminaries. Without troubling to remark that it was a nice day, as for London it was no doubt, she began in a tone of strict business, spot cash only. “Say, ma’am, can you let me a hall bedroom?”

From the chill mountain height of her disdain the landlady gave Mame a once-over. No matter what the case with her visitor she was in no hurry. The châtelaine of Fotheringay House had never heard of a hall bedroom. Her icy gaze travelled from Mame’s rather crushed hat via her seal plush coat to her tarnished rubbers with a quietly stiffening reserve. Clearly a foreigner. Picturesque creatures no doubt. The late Mr. Toogood was partial to them, but he, though of pure English blood, was of a romantic mind and an Italian warehouseman. His widow preferred to order her life on the sound old plan of giving a wide berth to aliens.

Christian people never knew quite where they were with aliens. Some of them paid, some of them didn’t. Mrs. Toogood’s experience had been mainly among the latter. And in her view, this sharp-eyed slip of a girl who asked for something outlandish in an accent you could cut with a knife, had the look and air of the didn’t.

It might have been racial prejudice, but that was the landlady’s feeling.

“From the Isle of Man, I presume,” said Mrs. Toogood loftily. Although she was the widow of an Italian warehouseman she was not in the least imaginative. The Isle of Man was her Ultima Thule, the farthest eagle flight of which her mind was capable.

Mame knew as much about the Isle of Man as the landlady knew about a hall bedroom. But she smiled broadly.

“I’m from New York.” Her voice went up a little as she made that damaging admission. For the admission was damaging.

“That would be America, would it not?” The growing gloom of the landlady began to verge upon melancholia.

Mame allowed that it would be.

The landlady sniffed. Mame knew by that sniff that the home of her fathers was in the discard.

Mrs. Toogood, if not a travelled woman, or a widely read or highly informed, was yet an educated one. She had been educated by the movies. That form of hyperculture which aims to instruct as well as to amuse and delights to draw together the nations of the earth had put this good lady wise on the subject of America.

Every Saturday afternoon it was the custom of a modern and progressive mother to take her twin sons, ætat nine years and two months, Horatio Nelson Toogood and Victor Emanuel Toogood by name—the Italian warehouseman had insisted on the Victor Emanuel in honour of his calling—to the Britannia Picture Palace in the Euston Road. In that centre of light they had learned that America was not quite what she gave herself out to be. God’s Own Country was a truly wicked place. The crook, the vamp, the dope-fiend, the cattle-rustler, the bootlegger, the forger, the slick duck, the run amok quick shooter, the holder-up of mails was as thick on the floor of those United States as the white and yellow crocus in a Thames meadow in the middle of February. And as London is to the virtuous island of Britain, so is New York to the infamous land of the free.

The English are a moral race. They honestly believe their morals are purer than any upon the wide earth. That is why the Pictures are not only educational, but popular. They exhibit Cousin Yank in the buff. And even if the sight embarrasses the pious cheek of Euston Road, N. W., it is pleasant sometimes to spare a blush for one’s rich relations.

In the dour eye that regarded Mame was sorrow. The girl looked harmless even if her speech was odd. But appearances are not things to bank on; at least in Mrs. Toogood’s experience.

“Any old box’ll do for me, so long as it’s clean and ain’t beyond my wad.”

“I have a small room on the top floor.” The landlady was guarded. It was next the servants and very difficult to let; the p.g.’s of Fotheringay House were persons of clearly defined social status.

Mame welcomed with enthusiasm the prospect of a small room on the top floor. The landlady repeated the once-over without enthusiasm. Should she? Or should she not? An outlandish girl, American to the bone, but this attic would be none the worse for a tenant, provided, of course, that she was really a paying one.

Elmer P. Dobree had told Mame more than once that “she was cute as a bag of monkeys.” The zoölogical resources of five continents could not have exceeded the flair with which Miss Durrance opened her vanity bag and produced an impressive roll of Bradburys.

“I’ll be happy to pay a fortnight in advance.” It was Mame’s best Broadway manner. “Here is the money. I am a very respectable girl.”

Reassured by the sight of the Bradburys rather than by the Broadway manner, which to the insular taste had a decidedly cosmopolitan flavour, the landlady went so far as to ask for a name and references.

“I’m a special European correspondent.” Mame gave a slow and careful value to each word.

A faint beam pierced the landlady’s gloom. She had feared “an actress”; although to be just to the girl she didn’t look that sort.

“Here is my card,” Broadway cold drawn and pure, with a dash of Elmer P. talking over the phone.

The châtelaine of Fotheringay House adjusted a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses and read:

Miss Amethyst Du Rance
New York City, U. S. A.
European Correspondent
Cowbarn Independent

The card was returned to its owner with polite thanks. A subtle gesture indicated that a sudden rise had occurred in the stock of Miss Amethyst Du Rance.

“I’m not quite sure, Miss Du Rance, but I may be able to find you a bedroom on the second floor.”

Victory! The roll had begun the good work, but the card had consummated it. One up for the Cowbarn Independent.

Iowa’s shrewd daughter had realized already that it would not do to make a poor mouth in Europe. All the same Aunt Lou’s legacy was melting like snow. Money must appear to be no object as far as Miss Amethyst Du Rance was concerned; yet she must watch out or a whole dollar would not pull more than fifty cents.

“Top floor’ll fix me.” Mame it was who spoke, yet with the lofty voice of Miss Amethyst Du Rance. “Tariff’ll be less, I reckon, but”—haughtily detaching a second Bradbury from the wad—“I’ll be most happy to pay spot cash in advance for a fortnight’s board and residence.”

Money is quite as eloquent in London, England, as it is in New York or Seattle or Milpitas, Cal. Mame’s air of affluence combined with a solid backing of notes did the trick, although the well-bred fashion in which a dyed-in-the-wool British landlady glossed over the fact seemed to render it non-existent.

“You have luggage, I presume?”

There was a trunk outside on the taxi.

“The porter will take it up to your room. I will ring for him now.”

Mrs. Toogood suited the word to the action, the action to the word. She was crisp and decisive, final and definite. Mame felt this lady was wasted in private life. She ought to have been in Congress.

IV

FIVE minutes later Miss Amethyst Du Rance and all her worldly goods were assembled in a small musty bedroom at the top of Fotheringay House. It smelt of damp. There was no grate or stove or any means of heating. The floor was shod with a very cold-looking brand of lino. Only a thin layer of cement divided the ceiling from the tiles of the roof—so thin, indeed, that the all-pervading yellow fog could almost be seen in the act of percolating through them.

Mrs. Toogood, who had personally conducted her new guest up three pairs of stairs, lit the gas and drew the curtains across the narrow window. She then informed Miss Du Rance that dinner was at half-past seven, but there would be afternoon tea in the drawing room on the first floor in about half an hour.

Mame took off her coat and hat, removed the stains of travel from a frank and good-humoured countenance, re-did her hair and applied a dab of powder to a nose which had a tendency to freckle; and then she went downstairs. Stirred by a feeling of adventure she forgot how cold she was; also she forgot the chill that had gathered about her heart. London, England, was a long, long way from home. Its climate was thoroughly depressing and the same could be said of its landladies. Whether the climate produced the landladies or the landladies produced the climate she had not been long enough in the island to say.

The light in the drawing room was dim. It half concealed a glory of aspidistra, lace curtains, anti-macassars and wax fruits. There was a solemnity about it which by some means had been communicated to a unique collection of old women who upon sofas and chairs were collected in a semi-circle round an apology for a fire. Mame could not repress a shiver as one sibyl after another looked up from her wool-work or her book and gave the firm-footed and rather impulsive intruder the benefit of a frozen stare from a glacial eye.

By the time Mame had subsided on the only unoccupied seat within the fire’s orbit, she felt that a jury of her sex having duly marked and digested her had come to the unanimous conclusion that she was guilty of presumption in being upon the earth at all. The detachment of this bunch of sibyls gave density and weight to the feeling. Their silence was uncanny. It was only disturbed by the click click of knitting pins and the occasional creak of the fire.

Mame had been five minutes in a situation which every second made more irksome, since for the first time in her life she was at a total loss for speech, when, as Mrs. Toogood had predicted, tea appeared. That lady, in a démodé black silk dress, which looked like an heirloom, preceded a metal urn, a jug of hot water, an array of cracked saucers and cups, some doubtful-looking bread and butter, and still more doubtful-looking cake. All these things were borne upon a tray by the prim maid who had first admitted Mame to Fotheringay House.

The sight of “the eats” cheered Mame up a bit. And in conjunction with Mrs. Toogood’s arrival, they certainly went some way towards unsealing the frozen atmosphere of the witches’ parlour. A place was found for the hostess near the fire; the small maid set up a tea-table; the cups and saucers began to circulate.

Mame was served last. By then the brew, not strong to begin with, had grown very thin. “Rather weak, Miss Du Rance, I fear,” loftily said its dispenser. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Mame, for whom that peculiarly British function which the French speak of as “le five-o’clock” was a new experience, promptly said she didn’t mind at all. Her voice was so loud that it fairly shattered the hush; it was almost as if a bomb had fallen into a prayer-meeting. Every ear was startled by the power of those broad nasal tones.

“This is Miss Du Rance of America.” The hostess spoke for the benefit of the company. It was not so much an introduction as an explanation; a defence and a plea rather than an attempt at mixing.

Some of the sibyls glared at Mame, some of them scowled. No other attention was paid her. Yet they were able to make clear that her invasion of the ancient peace of Fotheringay House was resented.

Little cared the visitor. Set of old tabbies. Bunch of fossilised mossbacks. She was as good as they. And better. In drawing comparisons, Miss Du Rance was not in the habit of underrating herself or of overrating others. And she was a born fighter.

Was it not sheer love of a fight that had brought her to Europe? She already saw that London was going to be New York over again: a city of four-flushers, with all sorts of dud refinements and false delicacies, unknown to Cowbarn, Iowa. Of course she was a little hick. But cosmopolitan experience was going to improve her. And cuteness being her long suit, these dames had no need to rub her rusticity into her quite so good and hearty.

As Mame toyed with a cup of tea that was mere coloured water and took a chance with the last surviving piece of “spotted dog,” which had just one raisin beneath a meagre scrape of butter, her quick mind brought her right up against the facts of the case. Somehow she wasn’t in the picture. She must study how to fit herself into her surroundings. That was what she was there for; to see the world and to put herself right with it.

When in Rome you must do like the Romans, or you’ll bite granite. Paula Wyse Ling had sprung that. And Paula knew, for she had travelled. What she really meant was that Mame Durrance must unlearn most of what she had learned at Cowbarn, Iowa, if she was going to fire the East.

Cowbarn was the home of the roughneck. But in New York City and London, England, highbrows swarmed like bees. These places were the native haunts of that Culture in which Mame had omitted to take a course.

She was soon convinced this was the dullest party she had ever been at. But it didn’t prevent her mind from working. Never in her life had she been more cast down. These people made her feel like thirty cents. They spoke in hushed and solemn voices. If this was Europe it would have been wiser to stay on her native continent.

Presently the small maid bore away the teapot and the crockery. With massive dignity the mistress followed her out. The landlady’s withdrawal seemed, if it were possible, to add new chills to the gloom, and Mame having reached the point where she could stand it no longer, had just decided to make a diversion by going up to her bedroom and unpacking her trunk when a new interest was lent to the scene. A man entered the room. Mame’s first thought was that he must have a big streak of natural folly to venture alone and unprotected into this nest of sleeping cats.

Strange to say, the temerarious male was made welcome. The density of the atmosphere lessened as soon as he came in. One old tabby after another began to sit up and take notice; and Mame, while busily engaged in watching the newcomer, had a feeling of gratitude towards him for having cast by his mere presence a ray of light upon that inspissated gloom.

Certainly he was no common man. As well as Mame could tell he was as old as the tabbies to whom he made himself so agreeable. Yet he was old with a difference. His abundant hair, which was snow white, was brushed in a dandified way, and the note of gallantry was repeated in every detail of his personality. His clothes, though not strikingly smart, were worn with an air. There was style in the set of his necktie, and if his trousers might bag a little at the knees they somehow retained the cut of a good tailor. Also he wore a monocle in a way that seemed to add grace and charm to his manner and to cancel his curious pallor and his look of eld.

Mame was at once deeply interested in this new arrival. No doubt he was one of the blood-peers, of whom she had read. Down on his luck perhaps, and for all his pleasant touch of swank, he somehow suggested it. Besides it stood to reason that a real blood-peer, used to the best that was going, as this old beau plainly was, would not be spending his time in a dead-alive hole playing purry-purry puss-puss if he were not up against it.

All the same there was absolutely nothing in his manner to suggest a shortage of dough. It was so grand that it seemed to banish any vulgar question of ways and means. To judge by the way he dandled his eyeglass while he entertained the tabbies with his measured yet copious and genial talk, he might have been the King of England with his beard off.

When the clock on the chimneypiece struck seven the ladies rose in a body and withdrew to prepare for the evening meal. Their example was followed by Mame. She would have liked to stay and get into conversation with the intriguing stranger, but dinner was in half an hour and it would take some little time to unpack her trunk in which was a new one-piece dress she was going to wear. Besides there would be a chance later in the evening, no doubt, of making his acquaintance.

As it happened this pleasure had to be postponed. To Mame’s disappointment the old boy did not appear at dinner. But she did not blame him. The food was meagre and those who ate it were quite the dullest set she had ever seen. Some of the guests were accommodated with small separate tables. One of these had been provided for Miss Du Rance. It was in a draughty corner, exposed to a strong current of air between two open doors which led to a large and antiquated lift whereby the meal ascended from the basement.

Mame felt small-town, but she had come to Europe to learn. Even if the seclusion of a private table had its conveniences she would have much preferred to mingle with her fellow p.g.’s. She was social by nature. Besides, she was determined to be a mixer. All these folks had it in their power to teach her something, duds though they were. Britain must give up all its secrets to Miss Amethyst Du Rance. Judging by the dead-beats who swarmed in this fog-bound isle they might amount to nothing; at the same time one cannot know too much of one’s subject. For some little time to come the subject for Miss Du Rance was going to be London, England.

V

THE next morning the fog had lifted and Mame set out for Fleet Street. By Mrs. Toogood’s advice she boarded Bus 26 which passed the end of Montacute Square; and having made a friend of the conductor, a kindly and cheerful young man, he promised to let her know when they came to Tun Court.

He was as good as his word. In about ten minutes he pulled the cord and popped his head into the bus. “Y’are, miss. Tun Court’s just opper-site.” And then as a concession to Mame’s accent, which was a long way from home: “Watch out, missy, when you cross the street.”

Mame with her recent experience of Broadway and Fifth Avenue felt she could have crossed this street on her head. It was so narrow. And although there was no lack of traffic it was moving slow with a remarkable sense of order and alignment. But Mame liked the young conductor for his briskness and his courtesy; and as she stepped off the knife-board and with the fleetness of a slender-ankled nymph she dodged between the delivery vans of the Westminster Gazette and the Morning Post she winged him a bright smile.

London, so far, was a city of disappointments. Tun Court added to their number. It was mean, insignificant, tumble-down, grimy. But Mame had read that Doctor Johnson or some other famous guy had either lived or died in it. The latter probably. No man would have chosen Tun Court to live in, unless he had gone off the handle, as the famous, she had also read, were more apt to do than ordinary folks.

The salient fact about Tun Court, however, had nothing to do with Doctor Johnson. It was the home of the well-known Society journal High Life. Mame would not have looked to find a paper of repute housed in this nest of frowsty, mildewed offices in which there was not space to swing a cat. But she did look and with such poor success that she had to open her bag and produce the address which Paula Ling had given her in order to verify it. Yes, it was O.K.: Number Nine, Tun Court, Fleet Street. Yonder, through that decaying arch, which by some means had evaded the great fire of B.C. 1666—or it may have been A.D.?—was the footpath the ancient Romans had laid along the Fleet Ditch; and the cobblestones upon which Mame stood, which no doubt had been laid by the Romans also, indubitably rejoiced in the name Tun Court, since straight before her eyes a sign was up to say so.

The puzzle was to find Number Nine. Tun Court dealt in names, not numbers. Among the names High Life was not to be found. There was the registered London office of the Quick Thinkers’ Chronicle; also of the Broadcasters’ Review; also of the official organ of the Amalgamated Society of Pew Openers. These were the portents which leaped to Mame’s eye, but the one she sought did not seem to be there. At the far end of the alley, however, where the light was so bad that it was difficult to see anything, she was just able to decipher the legend, High Life. Top Floor. It was painted on a wall, inside a doorway.

Mame boldly attacked some dark stairs, very hollow sounding and decrepit and full of sharp turns, passing en route the outer portals of the Eatanswill Gazette and other influential journals. The higher rose the stairs the darker they grew. But at last patience was rewarded. High Life—Inquiries, met the pilgrim’s gaze at the top of the second pair of stairs; yet had that gaze not been young and keen a match would have been needed to read the inscription on the wall.

She knocked on the door and went in. A pig-tailed flapper lifted her eyes slowly from Volume 224 of the Duchess Library.

In her best Broadway manner Mame asked if the editor was in. Miss Pigtail did not appear to be impressed by the Broadway manner. She made a bluff at concealing an out-size in yawns, laid aside her novelette with an air of condescension for which Mame longed to smack her face, and said, “I’ll take in your name.”

Mame felt discouraged, but she was determined not to let the minx know it. With an air she took a card from her bag; and Miss Pigtail after one supercilious glance at it went forth to an inner room whose door was marked Private.

In about thirty seconds Miss Pigtail reappeared. “This way, please,” she said haughtily. Mame still had a desire to put one over on the young madam; but evidently she was coming to business all right.

Seated before a roll-top desk, in a stuffy room twelve feet by twelve, whose only other furniture were an almanac and a vacant chair, was the editor of High Life. At least Mame surmised that the gentleman who received her occupied that proud position, even if he did not quite fulfil her idea of the part. It was difficult to say just where he fell short, but somehow he did fall short. He was one of those large flabby men who are only seen without a pipe in their mouths when they are putting liquids into it. His eyes were tired, his front teeth didn’t seem to fit, and he had that air of having been born three highballs below par which some men inherit and others acquire.

The editor of High Life was not a prepossessing man, although the most striking thing about him, his large moustache, was so wonderfully pointed and waxed, that Mame felt quite hypnotised by it. However, she took a pull on herself, made her best bow and elegantly presented Paula Wyse Ling’s introduction letter.

The visitor was invited to a chair. Then after brief examination of the envelope the editor made clear that he was not the person to whom it was addressed. “My name is Judson,” he said, “Digby Judson. I took over from Walter Waterson about nine months ago.”

“So long as you’re the main guy,” Mame assured him, “it’ll be all right. I want to connect up with this paper.”

With a slight frown of perplexity Mr. Digby Judson opened Miss Paula Ling’s letter. “It says nothing about experience,” he remarked mildly. “And to be quite candid I don’t know Paul M. Wing from Adam.”

“It’s a her,” said Mame matter-of-factly. “Paula Ling’s the name.”

“I beg her pardon, but I don’t know her from Eve.”

Mame had a feeling that she had struck a concealed rock. “Old Man Waterson would have, anyway,” she said; and with a royal gesture she indicated her own card, now lying on the editorial blotting pad.

Digby Judson took up the card and laughed. Mame was determined not to be sensitive, she simply could not afford to be, but that laugh somehow jarred her nerves. “Cowbarn Independent.” He gave her a comic look from the extreme corner of a bleared eye. “Holy Jones!”

Mame’s heart sank. It was New York over again. This guy was not quite so brusque, but he had the same sneer in his manner. A sick feeling came upon her that she was up against it.

“Cowbarn Independent! I don’t think you’ll be able to get away with that.”

It was almost like casting an aspersion upon Mame’s parents. Natural pugnacity leaped to her eyes. In fact it was as much as she could do to prevent it from jumping off the end of her tongue. “A lot you know about it,” she yearned to say, but prudently didn’t.

The editor of High Life toyed with the card and drew a mock serious sigh for which Mame could have slain him. “When did you arrive in this country, Miss Du Rance?”

“I landed Liverpool yesterday morning.”

“And may I ask what you propose to do now you’ve landed?”

For all the grim depth of her conviction that she could not afford to be thin-skinned, she resented the subtle impertinence of this catechism. Yes, it was New York over again. New York had advised her to cut out the Cowbarn and already she rather wished she had. But she had figured it out that London being a foreign city would not guess the sort of burg her home town was.

All the same her faith in herself was not shaken. It was weak to have these qualms. Mame Durrance was Mame Durrance if she hailed from Cowbarn, Iowa, and Abe Lincoln was Abe Lincoln even if he was raised in the wilds of Kentucky.

She crimsoned with mortification, but took herself vigorously in hand. “What’ll I do now I’ve landed? What do you suppose I’ll do?”

“Knock us endways, I expect.”

“That’d be too easy, I guess—with some of you.”

Mr. Digby Judson was by way of being a human washout but he liked this power of repartee. Few were the things he admired, but foremost among them was what he called “vim.” This amusing spitfire certainly had her share of that.

“You think I’m a little hick.” It is difficult to be wise when your temper breaks a string. “But I ain’t. Leastways I ain’t goin’ to be always. With European experience I’ll improve some.”

“Ye-es, I daresay.”

The dry composure of the editor’s voice caused Mame to see red. “I’m over here to pull the big stuff. An’ don’t forget it.”

Mr. Digby Judson found it hard to conceal his amusement. He gave his moustache a twirl and said patronisingly: “Well, Miss Du Rance, what can we do for you in the meantime?”

“Help me to a few dollars.”

Mr. Judson threw up his hands with an air of weary scorn. “My good girl, to seek dollars in Fleet Street is like looking for a flea in a five-acre plot. Never have they been so scarce or so many people after ’em. And pretty spry too, you know. They’ve studied the newspaper public and can give it just what it wants.”

Mame was undaunted. “A chance to see what I can do—that’s all I ask.”

“What can you do?”

“Suppose I write a bunch of articles on British social life as it strikes an on-time American.”

“Let us suppose it.” The editor had no enthusiasm.

“Will you print the guff and pay for it?”

This was in the nature of a leading question. Time was needed for Mr. Judson’s reply. “Rather depends, you know, on the sort of thing it is.” Out of deference for the feelings of his visitor he did his best to hide the laugh in his eyes. “You see what we chiefly go for is first-hand information about the aristocracy.”

Miss Du Rance was aware of that.

“Are you in a position to supply it?”

“I expect I’ll be able to supply it as well as most if I get the chance.”

“Well,” said Digby Judson, fixing Mame with a fishlike eye, “when you find yourself included in a party at a smart country house you can send along an account of the sayings and doings of your fellow guests, a description of their clothes, where they are going to spend the summer, who is in love with who and all that kind of bilge, and I’ll be very glad to consider it.”

Mame thanked Mr. Judson for his sporting offer. “I’m sure you’ll fall for my junk when you see it. There’ll be pep in it. But of course I’ll want intros to start in.”

“You have introductions, I presume?” The editor still hid his smile.

Unfortunately Miss Du Rance was rather short of introductions. But she hoped High Life would be able to make good the deficiency.

High Life, it seemed, was not in a position to do so. But it had a suggestion to offer. Mr. Digby Judson looked through a litter of papers on his desk. Detaching one from the pile he refreshed his memory by a careful perusal. Then he said: “There is a vacancy for a housemaid, I believe, at Clanborough House, Mayfair.”

The news left Mame cold.

“We have influence with the housekeeper at Clanborough House. She is not exactly a member of our staff, but she receives a fee to keep our interests at heart. Clanborough House is still a power in the political and social world. The position of housemaid offers considerable scope for a person of intelligence such as you appear to be, Miss Du Rance.”

“I? Housemaid! Me?” The voice of Miss Du Rance went up a whole octave.

“Of course,” said the editor, “to be quite candid, you would have rather to put a crimp in your style. These great houses are decidedly conservative. But you would find opportunities, large opportunities, believe me, in such a position for obtaining the information we require.”

Mame was staggered. The rôle of hired girl, even in a mansion, had not entered her calculations. “What do you take me for?” She rebuttoned her gloves, snorting blood and fire. “Don’t you see I’m a lady?”

Mr. Digby Judson gazed fixedly at Mame, stroking his exotic moustache in the process. “There are ladies and ladies. Frankly, Miss Du Rance, I can’t promise much success over that course. You see, in this country at the present time we are overstocked, even with the genuine article. We are as prolific of ladies in England as they are of rabbits in Australia. But what we want here is pep and that’s where you Americans have got the pull. It’s pep, Miss Du Rance, we are out for, and that, I take it, you are able to supply.”

Mame looked death at the editor. But she said nothing.

“If you’re wise you’ll give ladyism the go by. Better let me see if I can wangle this billet for you at Clanborough House. A rare chance, believe me, for a girl like yourself, to study our upper class from the inside. You’ll be lucky if you get another such opportunity. If you really give your mind to the job I feel sure you’ll do well.”

“No hired girling for me, I thank you,” Mame spoke in a level voice.

Mr. Digby Judson looked a trifle disappointed. “Well, think it over. But I am fully convinced of one thing.”

A down-and-out feeling upon her, Mame asked dully what the thing was.

“It’s the only terms on which you are ever likely to find yourself at Clanborough House or any other place of equal standing.”

Mame bit her lip to conceal her fury. The insult went deeper than any she had received in New York. As she bowed stiffly and turned to go she had a sudden thirst for Mr. Digby Judson’s blood.

She had reached the door, its clumsy knob was in her hand when she turned again, and said with a slow smile over-spreading a crimson face, “You’ll excuse me asking, won’t you, but do you mind telling me if it’s very difficult to train canaries to roost on your moustache?”

VI

BITTERLY disappointed, Mame promptly found her way back into Fleet Street. The beginning was bad and there was no disguising it. Her New York experience had prepared her for difficulties further east; but she had not reckoned to bite granite so soon or quite so hard. If she put a crimp in her style she might take a situation as a housemaid!

Moving towards the Strand she had now a feeling of hostility towards the people around her. These mossbacks who crowded the sidewalks had some conceit of themselves. But who were they? Mame asked herself that. Who were they, anyway?

Luncheon at a cheap restaurant hardly improved Mame’s temper. The “eats” seemed queer. But at any rate they appeared to stimulate the mind. In the course of the meal, with the help of a newspaper propped against the cruet, she did a lot of thinking.

To begin with, she must not look for too much success in London. As these Cockneys had it, Mame Durrance was not going to set the Thames on fire. The same applied with equal force to Miss Amethyst Du Rance. She must watch her step. Aunt Lou’s legacy had now dwindled to something under five hundred dollars. That plain fact was the writing on the wall.

Mame foresaw that her trip to Europe was not likely to prove a long one, unless by some happy chance she struck oil. But of this there was no sign. Since coming east she had met nothing but bad luck. And her reception in Tun Court that morning told her to expect no immediate change. Such being the case, she must put by half the money she still had, for a passage home across the Atlantic.

By counting every dime she might carry on in London six weeks. Within that time she hoped, of course, to find a means of adding to her slender store. But at the moment she could not say that things looked rosy. The folks here did not cotton to her, still less did she cotton to them.

After a slice of ham and a cup of coffee she ordered a piece of pumpkin pie. It was as if she had ordered the moon. The waitress had not even heard of the national delicacy.

Mame sighed. “Not heard of pumpkin pie!” This was a backward land. There was a lot of spadework to be done in it. A suspicion was growing that she would have done better to stay in New York. She had to be content with custard and stewed figs, upon which poor substitute she walked slowly along the Strand to Trafalgar Square. Here she turned into the National Gallery. As she ascended the many steps of the building she tried to raise a feeling of awe. Even if she was a little hick she knew that a true American citizeness mentally takes off her shoes when she enters a dome of Culture.

The feeling of awe was not very powerful. But she was a sane and cool observer of things and people; and if she was too honest to pretend to emotions she didn’t possess there was no reason why those walls should not be a mental stimulus.

She took a seat on a comfortable divan, before a large and lurid Turner, all raging sea and angry sky. This picture impressed Mame Durrance considerably less than it had impressed Ruskin. But a hush of culture all around enabled her to sit two good hours putting her ideas in order. A plan of some sort was necessary if she was going to make good. When she set out from Cowbarn, six months back, she felt that her natural abilities would carry her through anything. Now, she was not so sure. Things were no longer rose colour. There was a terrible lot of leeway to make up. She just had not guessed that she was so far behind the game. Perhaps it had been wiser to stay at home and put herself through college.

Chastened by the buffets of the day she returned to Montacute Square about five. When she entered the gloomy drawing room the tabbies received her icily. Not a sign of success on the horizon so far. The tea drinking was as depressing as ever. Nobody took any notice of her.

The aloofness of these frumps was as hard to bear as the insolence of the editor of High Life. Mame’s resentment grew. Presently she rose and went up to her cold bedroom. She got out her writing case. Perched with knees crossed, on the end of her bed, she spent a prosperous hour jotting down her first day’s impressions of London, England.

Vigorous mental exercise seemed to take a load off her spirit. What she had written ought to raise a smile in Elmer P. To-morrow she would go at it again; then it should be typed and mailed. If the boob fell for it, and born optimist that Mame Durrance was, she felt he sure would, where that stuff came from there was good and plenty more to pull.

VII

WHEN Mame returned to the drawing room she was dressed for the evening meal. It was only seven o’clock and she counted on having the place to herself, since at that hour the tabbies would be occupied with their own preparations. But as it happened the room was not quite empty. There was just one person in it.

The old elegant, who had already excited Mame’s curiosity, stood before the meagre fire warming his thin hands. As soon as she came in he turned towards her with a little bow of rare politeness.

“I am told,” he said in the deepest, most measured tone Mame had ever heard, “you are an American.”

Mame owned to that in the half-humorous manner she had already adopted for the benefit of these islanders. Some folks might have been abashed by this obvious grandee. Not so Miss Amethyst Du Rance. She was as good as the best and she was in business to prove it. These bums were not to be taken at their own valuation. Back of everything her faith in her own shrewd wits was unshakable.

“I have a very warm corner in my heart for all Americans.”

“Have you so?” said Mame.

There was not a hint of patronage in the old buck’s manner, yet in spite of his air of simple kindness, Mame somehow felt the King-of-England-with-his-beard-off feeling creeping upon her. He was the goods all right, this old john, but she was determined to take him in her stride as she would have taken President Harding or any other regular fellow.

“Won’t you tell me your name?”

Mame opened the small bag which she never parted with, even at meal times, and took out her card. The old man fixed his eyeglass and scanned it with prodigious solemnity. “Cowbarn.” A bland pause. “Now tell me, what state is that in? It’s very ignorant not to know,” he apologetically added.

“No, it ain’t.” Mame was captivated by the air of humility, although not sure that it was real. “Cowbarn’s in the state of Iowa. On’y a one-horse burg.”

“Ah, yes, to be sure, Iowa.” The grandee made play with his eyeglass. “I remember touring the Middle West with Henry Irving in ’89.”

So long was ’89 before Mame was born that she was a trifle vague upon the subject of Henry Irving. But she knew all about Lloyd George, Arthur, Earl of Balfour, and even Old Man Gladstone of an earlier day. She surmised that Henry was one of these.

“A senator, I guess?”

“My dear young lady, no.” The tone of surprise was comically tragic. “Henry Irving was the greatest ac-torr Eng-laand ever produced.”

“You don’t say!” The awe in Mame’s voice was an automatic concession to the awe in the voice of the speaker.

“Yes, Eng-laand’s greatest ac-torr.” There was a note of religious exaltation in the old grandee. “I toured the United States three times with Henry Irving.”

“Did you visit Cowbarn?” Mame asked for politeness’ sake. To the best of her information, Cowbarn, like herself, had not been invented in ’89.

“I seem to remember playing the Duke there to Henry Irving’s Shylock at a one-night stand,” said the grandee also for politeness’ sake. He had never heard of Cowbarn, he had never been to Iowa, and in ’89 Henry the August had given up the practice of playing one-night stands. But the higher amenities of the drawing room are not always served by a conservative handling of raw fact.

Mame, with that sharp instinct of hers, knew the old chap was lying. But it didn’t lessen her respect. He had an overwhelming manner and when he gave the miserable fire a simple poke he used the large gesture of one who feels that the eyes of the universe are upon him. Still, with every deduction made, and a homely daughter of a republic felt bound to make many, he was the most human thing she had met so far in her travels.

His name was Falkland Vavasour. And in confiding to Mame this bright jewel of the English theatre, which his pronunciation of it led her to think it must be, he yet modestly said that its lustre was nought compared with the blinding effulgence of the divine Henry.

“Some ac-torr, old man Henry Irv,” Mame was careful to pronounce the sacred word “actor” in the manner of this old-timer.

“My de-ah young lady, Henry Irving was a swell. Never again shall we look upon his like.”

“I’ll say not.” And then with an instinct to hold the conversation at the level to which it had now risen Mame opened the door of fancy. “Come to think of it, I’ve heard my great-uncle Nel speak of Henry Irving. You’ve heard, I guess, of Nelson E. Grice, the Federal general, one of the signatures to the peace of Appomattox. He was the brother of my mother’s mother. Many’s the time I’ve set on Great-uncle’s knee and played with the gold watch and chain that his old friend General Sherman give him the day after the battle of Gettysburg.”

Great-uncle Nel had really nothing to do with the case, but Mame felt he was a sure card to play in this high-class conversation. The old Horse had not been a general, he had not signed the peace of Appomattox, and there was a doubt whether General Sherman, whose friend he certainly was, had ever given him a gold watch and chain; but he was a real asset in the Durrance family. Apart from this hero there was nothing to lift it out of the rut of mediocrity. Quite early in life Mame had realized the worth of great-uncle Nel.

Mr. Falkland Vavasour had the historical sense. He rose to General Nelson E. Grice like a trout to a may fly. The old buck refixed his eyeglass and recalled the Sixties. He was playing junior lead at the Liverpool Rotunda when the news came of President Lincoln’s assassination. He remembered— But what did he not remember? Yes, great-uncle Nel was going to be a sure card in London, England.

Mame was getting on with the old beau like a house on fire when the clock on the chimneypiece struck half-past seven. Mr. Falkland Vavasour gave a little sigh and said he must go. Mame, quickened already by a regard for this charming old man, who lit the gloom of Fotheringay House, expressed sorrow that he was not dining in.

There is a tide

THERE IS A TIDE

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