There was another silence. In the orchestra, out beyond the palms and screens of the Venetian room, the first violin was playing the Humoresque. The girl leaned forward slightly, watching Jimmie's face. Her lips were parted, and an unexpected sympathy softened her eyes.
"She had been a school teacher back in Iowa," he resumed, "and long winter evenings and Sundays when she could, she always had her books out. Up to the year I was twenty, she taught me all I knew. She tried her best to make a man of me, and I can see now how she turned my mind to journalism. She said some day there was going to be an opening for a newspaper right there in the Columbia desert. Where a great river received the waters of another big stream, there was bound to be a city. She saw farther than we did. The High Line canal was only a pipe dream then, but she believed it would come true. When she died, we hadn't the heart to stay on with the ranch, so Dad gave it to me, to sell for what I could get, and went back to Iowa. He said he had promised her he would give me a chance at the State University, and that was the best he could do. And, well, you see I had to come to the U. of W. to stay, and I was used to work. I did all sorts of stunts out of hours and managed to pull through the second semester. Then I hiked over the mountains to the Wenatchee valley and earned enough that summer vacation to tide me over the next year. I had a friend there in the sage-brush country, a station agent named Bailey, who had blown a thousand dollars into a tract of desert land he hadn't seen off the map. He was the kind of fellow to call himself all kinds of a fool, then go ahead and make that ground pay his money back. He saw a way to bring it under irrigation and had it cleared and set to apples. But, while he was waiting for the trees to grow, he put in fillers of alfalfa and strawberries. He was operating for the new Milwaukee railroad then, and hired me to harvest his crops. They paid my wages and the two Japs I had to help, with a snug profit. And his trees were doing fine; thrifty, every one in the twenty acres. Last year they began to bear, only a few apples to a tree, but for flavor and size fit for Eden. This year he is giving up his position with the Milwaukee; his orchards are going to make him rich. And he wrote me the other day that the old ranch I threw away is coming under the new High Line ditch. The company that bought it has platted it into fruit tracts. Think-of that! Trees growing all over that piece of desert. Water running to waste, where mother and I carried it in buckets through the sand, in the sweltering heat, up that miserable slope."
The Society Editor drew a full breath and settled back in her chair. Her glance fell to her glass, and she laid her fingers on the thin stem. Jimmie refreshed himself again with the ice-water. "I didn't mean to go into the story so deep," he said, "but you are a good listener."
"It was worth listening to," she answered earnestly. "I've always wondered about your mother; I knew she must have been nice. But you must simply hate the sight of cards now. I am sorry I said what I did. And I don't care how it happened, here is to that 'Little Streak of Luck.' May it lead to the great pay-streak."
She reached her glass out for Jimmie to touch with his, then raised it to her lips. Daniels drank and held his glass off to examine the remaining liquor, like a connoisseur. "I play cards a little sometimes," he confessed; "on boats and places where I have to kill time. But," and he brightened, "it was this way about that streak of luck. I was detailed to write up the new Yacht Club quarters at West Seattle, with illustrations to show the finer boats at the anchorage and, while I was on the landing making an exposure of the Morganstein yacht, a tender put off with a message for me to come aboard. Mr. Morganstein had seen me from the deck, where he was nursing his injured leg. He was lonesome, I suppose. There was no one else in sight, though as I stepped over the side, I heard a victrola playing down below. 'How are you?' he said. 'Have a seat.' Then he scowled down the companionway and called: 'Elizabeth, stop that infernal machine, will you?'
"The music was turned off, and pretty soon Miss Morganstein came up the stairs. She was stunning, in a white sailor suit with red fixings, eyes black as midnight; piles of raven hair. But as soon as he had introduced us, and she had settled his pillows to suit him—he was lying in one of those invalid chairs—he sent her off to mix a julep or something. Then he said he presumed we were going to have a fine cut of the Aquila in the Sunday paper, if I was the reporter who made that exposure at the time of the accident to his car. I told him yes, I was Daniels, representing the Press, and had the good fortune to be in Snoqualmie Pass that day. 'I was sure of it,' he said. 'Watched you over there with these binoculars.' He put the glasses down on a table and opened a drawer and took out his fountain-pen and checkbook. 'That write-up was so good,' he said, handing me the blank he had filled, 'I want to make you a little present. But you are the first Press reporter I ever gave anything to, and I want this kept quiet.'
"I thanked him, but when I looked at that check I woke up. It was for a cool hundred dollars. I tried to make him take it back; I told him my paper was paying me; besides, I couldn't accept all the credit; that you had fixed up the story and put the names right, and the first cut was yours. 'Never mind,' he said, 'I have something else for your society miss to do. I am going to have her describe my new country place, when it's all in shape. Takes a woman to get hold of the scenery and color schemes.' Then he insisted I had earned the extra money. Not one man in a hundred would have been quick enough to make that exposure, and the picture was certainly fine of the whole group. In fact, he wanted that film of the car swinging into the embankment. He wanted to have an enlargement made."
"I see," said Miss Atkins slowly, "I see." She paused, scooping the crest from her pineapple ice, then added: "Now we are getting to the core."
"I told him it belonged to the paper, but I thought I would be able to get it for him," Jimmie resumed. "And he asked me to bring it down to Pier Number Three just before four this afternoon. The Aquila was starting for a little cruise around Bainbridge Island to his country place, and if I wanted to work in something about her equipment and speed, I might sail as far as the Navy Yard, where they would make a short stop. Then he mentioned that Hollis Tisdale might be aboard, and possibly I would be able to pick up a little information on the coal question. These Government people were 'non-committal,' he said, but there was a snug corner behind the awnings aft, where in any case I could work up my Yacht Club copy."
"So," remarked the Society Editor slowly, "it's a double core."