“I hardly dared hope I should have the esteemed pleasure of meeting a fellow Southerner—and one so charming—so soon after my advent into this far Western city,” he said. “When our delightful hostess mentioned the fact I was agreeably surprised, most agreeably. You will pardon me the liberty I take in paying you compliments at so early a stage of our mutual acquaintance. But between Southerners meeting so far from home there is bound to be a bond, as you know.” His antique stilted language had a pleasant flavor for the show girl. She wanted to giggle and yet she was flattered. “I was on the point of putting more questions last evening when something intervened—I believe you were called away. Pardon me again, but might I inquire from what part of our beloved South you hail?”
“From Georgia,” she answered, more or less on a venture. Back in New York it usually had sufficed when she announced that she was a Southerner.
“Why, then, that does indeed strengthen the tie between us,” he said. “By birth I am a Carolinian but my dear mother was a Georgian of the Georgians. She was a Colquit—one of the Savannah Colquits.” So, in another century, a descendant of a Tudor or a Percy might have spoken. “From what part of that noble old state do you come?”
“Well, not from any place in particular,” she parried desperately. “I mean, not from any regular town, you understand. I was born out in the country, on a kind of a country place—a farm, sort of.”
“Ah, a plantation,” he corrected her gently. “In our country we call them plantations. But near where? And in what county?”
To gain time she spooned her mouth full of apple sauce. This was like filling in a blank for a census taker, only worse. In a panic she cast about in that corner of her mind where her knowledge of geography should have been. She thought of Columbus. There ought to be a Columbus in Georgia; there just must he. There was one in Ohio, she remembered: she played it once with a Shubert road show. And one in Indiana, too. She knew a fellow from there, a chorus man in the Follies. So she took a chance:
“I was born out from a town called Columbus—about twenty miles out, I think.”
“Oh, Columbus—a lovely and a thriving little city,” he said, and she breathed easier but only for an instant. “I know it well; I know many of the older families there. If you are from near Columbus you must know the—”
She broke in on him. These waters grew steadily deeper.