"I'll get your ticket then," he went on. "If you'll give me twenty-five dollars--five pounds, you know--I'll hand you back the change; but I'm afraid it won't be much."
"Change?" I echoed. "Why, I supposed it would be ever so much more than five pounds to get to Chicago, which is almost in Central America, isn't it?"
"The people who live there think it's central," said Mr. Brett. "But they make the railroad men keep prices down, so that dissatisfied New Yorkers can afford to go and live there. It isn't a bad journey, you'll find. I think it will interest you. You sleep and eat in the train, you know."
"What fun!" I exclaimed. "I've never slept in a train, even on the Continent."
"If you had, it would be different from this one," said he. "Can you be ready in twenty-five minutes? The train which we call the Twentieth Century, starts at 2.45."
"I'm ready now," said I. "The sooner we're on the way the better. But oh, about Vivace. Will they allow him to sleep and eat too?"
"I expect I can arrange that," Mr. Brett answered, in such a confident way that I felt sure he could do it, or anything else he set out to do. It really was lucky for me that he happened to be travelling West that same day, and such an extraordinary coincidence, too.
"Are you going on journalistic business?" I asked.
"No, it's business I'm undertaking for a friend," he explained. "But I hope to get something good for myself out of it in the end."
"Oh, I do hope you will," I replied. "I'm sure you deserve to."