“It is, in a certain sense, the fact you have just touched upon that brought me here,” said Richard, as they seated themselves at a small table in a dining-room curiously decorated in black and white. Around them, seated in small groups, were men whose faces bore the European stamp. Here and there a young woman could be seen, smiling over her claret at her vis-à-vis, her white teeth making her dark eyes more striking by contrast. There was nothing distinctly American in the scene, excepting a small, active, little newsboy, who rushed from table to table selling the evening edition of the Trumpet, and requesting patronage in a voice that indicated an ancestral brogue. Fenton, however, soon added one more native feature to the picture by ordering a Manhattan cocktail from a waiter who looked as though he might be a pretender to the throne of France, and sipping it slowly as he waited for Stoughton to explain himself.
“You see,” went on the younger man, whose handsome face had already begun to attract the burning glances of several impressionable young women at the surrounding tables, “you see, I had my choice of going into the bank at Norwich, and depending upon my father’s influence to push me forward in a line of life I detest, or coming to New York to follow my natural bent, and to broaden my views by contact with all kinds of people. Of course my father hoped that I would choose the former course. But how could I? How good this soup is, Fenton.”
“Yes,” answered the elderly journalist, who was much better groomed than the first time we met him; “the dinner they serve here is generally quite eatable—especially good, you know, if the proprietor realizes that you are a newspaper man. The next thing to being a millionnaire in New York, my boy, is to be a city editor.” Fenton smiled in his usual sarcastic way.
“Then I go up a peg to-morrow night,” remarked Richard playfully. “I dine with a city editor to-night, and with a millionnaire to-morrow night.”
“Indeed.” Fenton looked at his companion with an expression of interest on his face.
“Yes; I had a note a few days ago from a distant relative of my father’s, Percy-Bartlett, who asked me to call on him at his office. He owns real estate, I think; but to judge from the number of his clerks, I don’t think he can be overworked himself. At all events, he was quite cordial, in his touch-me-not kind of way, and I promised to dine with him and his wife to-morrow evening. I think he was astonished to find that I was no longer a reporter, for his cordiality increased when I told him about my promotion.”
Fenton smiled rather coldly, and filled his glass with red wine.
“No wonder he was astonished, my boy,” he said, as he set down his goblet; “I have been in active newspaper service for nearly fifteen years, and your elevation from the ranks is the most surprising occurrence in my recollection.”
“I suppose it is remarkable,” commented Richard, as the waiter served them with game that had been strong enough to break the law. “I haven’t quite fathomed it myself.”
“In one sense it is simple enough,” continued Fenton. “‘To him that hath shall be given,’ you know, ‘and to him that hath not,’ etc. If you had been seeking a place as brevier writer or editorial paragrapher you could not have obtained it, but, presto, it comes to you unsought.”