The girl turned instantly to me, opening at the same time the business-like black leather chatelaine which hung at her side.
“How much was it?” she inquired.
“My dear young lady,” I said, “it was nothing at all. I beg of you to put away your purse. Those cards are distributed free. I merely put something in because the old man and I are friends.”
She looked at me a moment with some intensity, and then snapped her bag. It occurred to me that her mind would sound like that—when she made it up, as we say.
“How do you and the old man happen to be friends?” she demanded rather abruptly. “Do you live here?”
“Yes,” I answered, expressing the will for the deed.
“You speak English very well,” she commented, regarding me much as if I had been a Bearded Lady, or a glove worn by Gustavus Adolphus.
“Thank you!” I exclaimed. “That is a great compliment, for I was born in Vermont.”
I suspected that my interlocutress did not altogether appreciate this point. She continued to regard me with such fixedness that I had an immediate intuition of what she was about to say. She would require of me to inform her why I lived abroad when I was privileged to dwell in a country so far superior to every other, and however ingenious might be my pretence she would put me in the wrong. My intuition, however, as too frequently is the case, was mistaken. The young lady opened once more her chatelaine bag, drew forth the receptacle from which she had endeavoured to reimburse my expenditure in her behalf, and produced a neatly printed card which she handed to me. Upon this I read the legend:
Miss Henrietta C. Stackpole
THE OMAHA REVIEWER