"Pray take a seat, Miss——"
"I am Cordelia."
"Cordelia!"
"Yes, privately Josie Higgins. I hope that you can give me a photograph of yourself that we can publish. The public is dying to hear all about you. I must interview you or die in the attempt, which would be very inconvenient as I have an appointment to see Gretz at two-thirty, fellow who killed his mother-in-law. Thanks, I will take the chair. It is getting quite warm again, isn't it?"
She pulled out a small note book and a business-like pencil from a frivolous handbag, as my heart sank within me. I shared the feelings of a small boy haled before the principal of his school. She looked small and inoffensive, but I knew that pencil of hers to be sharper than the serpent's tooth. Heavens! She was looking at the slouchy slippers I still wore and at the bed, yet undone, since I had told the landlady she might as well have it attended to after my departure. Her eyes wandered swiftly from the inkspot on the carpet to the bundle of collars and shirts Eulalie had deposited on my trunk. She also picked up my fragrant calabash from the desk close at hand and contemplated it, curiously. All this quick as a flash.
After this, she scrutinized my countenance, with her head cocked a little to one side, and jotted down something.
"That's good," she declared, apparently much gratified. "I think I know what you would say, but you had better tell it yourself. For nothing on earth would I fake an interview, and anyway you look very kind and obliging. Now tell me how you ever happened to think of 'Land o' Love.'"
"I'm sure I don't know," I answered truthfully.
"Undoubtedly," she acquiesced. "Ideas like that just worm themselves into one's head and one puts them down. But, of course, that won't quite do. Don't you think we had better say that you have long been impressed by the sadness of most lives, in the end, and were anxious to show how, from unpromising beginnings, an existence may turn from dross into refined gold by the exercise of will, of human sympathy, of tolerance of foibles and love for one's fellow man? That will do very nicely!"
She was putting down her words with lightning speed.