"Ten kilometres down and back," estimated Truesdale; "ten kilometres of luxury and grandeur—don't let it overpower you. And you are learning where the shops are, I suppose, and the theatres, and the post-office, perhaps, and the hotels, and what all besides."
"No," said Bertie Patterson, proudly; "I knew all that before I came.
There are books, you know—and maps. I studied them at home beforehand."
Truesdale had never seen any of the books, but he thought their existence probable enough. He remembered, to, his own maps—how he had become familiar with the London clubs long before walking through Pall Mall, and how he knew where to find all the Paris theatres years previous to his first stroll along the Boulevard. "And you have been to all the high places, I suppose?"
"I've been to the top of the Masonic Temple."
"And to the places were they have the sun-dials, and the gates ajar, and the American flag made of—of—Heaven knows what?"
"The parks? Yes, we have been to one or two of them, but we were a little late for all those lovely things; most of them had been dug up."
"Lovely things!" groaned Truesdale. "Fancy them in the Bois or along the Row—or anywhere but here!" Yet he felt sure that she had his own fondness for pleasure-grounds and points of view. She had doubtless anticipated the Masonic Temple and Washington Park, just as he had anticipated the Pincian and the Tower of the Capitol. His fellow-feeling forgave her this crudity; after all, she was praising what she had never seen.
"I've been to your parks myself," the other girl broke in, as she glanced round the vase of chrysanthemums from the other side of the table. "But if you want to see a park, come to New York." She was rather abrupt and boisterous; Truesdale wondered if she had not at one time been a tomboy.
"And I know where ever so many of the society people live," Bertie went on in a low tone, which implored him not to repeat, and above all not to laugh. "I saw a book once with all their addresses, and I marked the places on the map."
Truesdale did smile here—crumbling, the while, a biscuit on the corner of the table. He smiled, not because she had seemed to refer to society people as a distinct and unique order of beings, but from pure sympathy. He himself had placed Stafford House and Bridgewater House and all the other town residences of the English aristocracy in those same days when he had found sites for the Pall Mall clubs.