CHAPTER XI. — THE WRECK OF THE ALTONIA
“Florence will be ready to start to-morrow,” said Alice. This was welcome intelligence to Quincy, who wished several days to spare in New York before sailing.
As soon as his wife and sister were located at a hotel in New York, he made the trip to Lyndon in the Adirondacks to see Arthur Scates. He found him greatly improved, and he told Quincy that he had not felt so well in years. The doctors, too, were more than pleased with his condition, and said that it was only a question of a few months when he would be entirely well again.
When he returned to New York he found that Alice had been to visit Mrs. Ernst in West 41st Street. Madame Archimbault lived with them and still carried on the millinery establishment on Broadway, in which Quincy had accidentally discovered the long-sought Linda Putnam masquerading under the name of Celeste. How that discovery had operated to change the lives of many people came forcibly to Quincy as he sought Leopold Ernst in his down-town office.
Leopold was almost hidden behind piles of manuscripts and newspapers when Quincy entered his room.
“Up to your neck, Leopold?”
As soon as Leopold saw who had addressed him, he jumped up, pushed a pile of manuscripts from his desk to the floor, and grasped Quincy's extended hand in both of his.
“Let me help you pick up your papers,” said Quincy.
“No, they're in their proper places. They're rejected. I have accepted two out of fifty or more. The American author sends tons to the literary mill, but it grinds out but a few pounds. But the novices are improving. They will yet lead the world, for we have a new country full of God's wonderful works, and a composite population whose loves and hates reproduce in new scenes all the passions of the Old World. They are the same pictures of human goodness and frailty in new frames—and my business is to judge the workmanship of the frames.”