“Say, son, does it hurt you any to look that way?”
“Beg your pardon, moddam?”
“All right, Mr. Asquith. On’y my ignorance. You can beat it.”
“Thank you, moddam.” Gently and gravely, without a ghost of a smile, the polite child went.
It was well for Mame Durrance that she had these resources within herself. For at the moment she was not on good terms with life. The railway company’s café au lait, for which it had the nerve to charge a quarter, allowing for the rate of exchange, was not very stimulating either. And Detective Addelsee had shaken her considerably. It surely looked as if the bad luck which had dogged her ever since she left Cowbarn, Iowa, six months ago was going to cling.
It was just six months ago that Mame Durrance had heard the call of ambition in rather strange circumstances. At that time she was a stenographer, earning a few dollars a week, in the office of the Cowbarn Independent. But her Aunt Lou, a sister of her long dead mother, having left her a legacy of two thousand dollars, she at once turned her face east.
These providential dollars must be invested in seeing life. And as native wit had carried her already from a farm kitchen to a stenographer’s chair, she saw no reason why, with money in her purse, that priceless quality should not take her much further. Anyhow it should not be for lack of trying.
She would see life. And in moments of optimism, of which at the start she had many, she went on to describe what she saw. The seeing, alas, proved easier than the writing; or rather the seeing and the writing were easier than to persuade editors “to fall” for her copy. Too many were at the game in the bright city of New York; wisenheimers of both sexes, who instead of coming via Poppa’s pig-farm had been through College.
There was the rub. At Cowbarn the folks didn’t set much store by College. But New York was different.
She was a shrewd girl and it did not take long for her to realise that she was some way behind the game. Human nature was always human nature, when you came down to cases, but there was no denying that she lacked experience. Back of everything was faith in herself, but so wide was the gulf between Cowbarn, Iowa, and the banks of the Hudson that no amount of faith could bridge it.