"What about your friend whose business you've come to attend to?" I asked. "I mustn't be so selfish as to interfere with that, whatever happens."
"Oh, I can attend to both interests," he assured me, "without neglecting either. I shan't need to let one interfere with the other. And remember, I won't stir out of my hotel till I've had your note."
Bereft of him, Chicago overawed me, and took my breath away. It is a good thing I saw New York first, for if I'd come straight from England with only memories of peaceful London to support me through the ordeal, I don't know but it might have affected my brain.
For one thing, there was a high wind which seemed to have a fancy for making off with your hat. It was an exciting sort of wind, too, which played with your nerves; but whether it was that, or whether something extraordinary was happening just out of sight round the corner of nearly every street we passed, and all the people we saw were tearing like mad to the spot, I don't know, but anyhow they seemed a good deal agitated, and there were more varieties of startling street noises even than in New York. The cable cars were like live, untamed things that scorned to wait the convenience of wretched little human beings. Such women and girls as had performed the feat of clambering on board didn't dream for a moment that the creatures might be induced to stop and let them get down. They simply hurled themselves off as they could, and my heart was in my mouth for them, and for myself, many times while my cab mingled with the surging and apparently uncontrolled traffic.
It was a long drive, though, and as I had time to calm down I saw that numbers of the huge buildings are nobly designed, and very magnificent in decoration, making a splendid effect in spite of their vast size rather than because of it. And such shops, too! They're like the fairy palaces my nurse used to tell me about, as big as whole cities, where you could get anything you wanted just by wishing.
On the way, I made up my mind to ask Sally a number of questions; why they have the curbstones so high in Chicago; why the women, though dressed much the same as in New York, look quite different and have a style of their own, even in their walk; why almost all the men are young; and why, though there is such a network of trams, nearly everybody seems to need a motor car?
I think American girls must be braver than English ones, for where with us, if a girl drives a motor she is so remarkable that her picture is at once put in a newspaper, in the States a girl in a car, in the midst of howling traffic, doesn't even have the air of wanting to scream or faint, but just sits straight up and smiles with her figure looking inexpressibly French; and there are two or three of her in every important street.
There was a wonderful swinging bridge which we had to wait for until it chose to come to us, like the mountain to Mahomet, and presently we trotted into a beautiful Avenue near a startlingly unexpected blue sea which I thought must be a mirage, till the cabman said it was Lake Michigan. But who would have thought of a lake being like that? The only ones I ever saw were pretty little things in parks where you fed swans.
At last we stopped before a large, handsome house, with a lawn round it and no fence. The house was stone in front, but had brick sides which gave it a queer effect, yet somehow didn't spoil it; and wherever there wasn't a porch, it had broken out in bow windows.
I told the cabman to wait, and then ran up the four or five steps to ring the front door bell. In a minute a maid came who would have been very smart-looking if she had only worn a proper cap.