"Tippecanoe? Not exactly that. I wasn't acquainted with any one in the office, but they had printed somethings of mine, and they were willing to let me try my hand. That was all I could ask."
"Of course! You knew you could do the rest. Well, it is like a romance.
A woman couldn't have such an adventure as that!" sighed the girl.
"But women do!" Burnamy retorted. "There is a girl writing on the paper now--she's going to do the literary notices while I'm gone--who came to Chicago from Ann Arbor, with no more chance than I had, and who's made her way single-handed from interviewing up."
"Oh," said Miss Triscoe, with a distinct drop in her enthusiasm.
"Is she nice?"
"She's mighty clever, and she's nice enough, too, though the kind of journalism that women do isn't the most dignified. And she's one of the best girls I know, with lots of sense."
"It must be very interesting," said Miss Triscoe, with little interest in the way she said it. "I suppose you're quite a little community by yourselves."
"On the paper?"
"Yes."
"Well, some of us know one another, in the office, but most of us don't.
There's quite a regiment of people on a big paper. If you'd like to come out," Burnamy ventured, "perhaps you could get the Woman's Page to do."
"What's that?"
"Oh, fashion; and personal gossip about society leaders; and recipes for dishes and diseases; and correspondence on points of etiquette."
He expected her to shudder at the notion, but she merely asked, "Do women write it?"
He laughed reminiscently. "Well, not always. We had one man who used to do it beautifully--when he was sober. The department hasn't had any permanent head since."
He was sorry he had said this, but it did not seem to shock her, and no doubt she had not taken it in fully. She abruptly left the subject.
"Do you know what time we really get in to-morrow?"
"About one, I believe--there's a consensus of stewards to that effect, anyway." After a pause he asked, "Are you likely to be in Carlsbad?"
"We are going to Dresden, first, I believe. Then we may go on down to Vienna. But nothing is settled, yet."
"Are you going direct to Dresden?"
"I don't know. We may stay in Hamburg a day or two."
"I've got to go straight to Carlsbad. There's a sleeping-car that will get me there by morning: Mr. Stoller likes zeal. But I hope you'll let me be of use to you any way I can, before we part tomorrow."
"You're very kind. You've been very good already--to papa."
He protested that he had not been at all good. "But he's used to taking care of himself on the other side. Oh, it's this side, now!"
"So it is! How strange that seems! It's actually Europe. But as long as we're at sea, we can't realize it. Don't you hate to have experiences slip through your fingers?"
"I don't know. A girl doesn't have many experiences of her own; they're always other people's."
This affected Burnamy as so profound that he did not question its truth.
He only suggested, "Well; sometimes they make other people have the experiences."
Whether Miss Triscoe decided that this was too intimate or not she left the question. "Do you understand German?"
"A little. I studied it at college, and I've cultivated a sort of beer-garden German in Chicago. I can ask for things."
"I can't, except in French, and that's worse than English, in Germany, I hear."
"Then you must let me be your interpreter up to the last moment. Will you?"
She did not answer. "It must be rather late, isn't it?" she asked. He let her see his watch, and she said, "Yes, it's very late," and led the way within. "I must look after my packing; papa's always so prompt, and I must justify myself for making him let me give up my maid when we left home; we expect to get one in Dresden. Good-night!"
Burnamy looked after her drifting down their corridor, and wondered whether it would have been a fit return for her expression of a sense of novelty in him as a literary man if he had told her that she was the first young lady he had known who had a maid. The fact awed him; Miss Triscoe herself did not awe him so much.
