New York had laughed at her, scorned her, humiliated her deeply and cruelly in more ways than one. She had been advised by newspaper men and also by police officers, professing a disinterested care for rustic ignorance playing a lone hand, to go back to dad and the pigs. These experts were confident that Miss Mame Durrance would get no good of New York.
However, they didn’t know quite so much about Mame Durrance as she knew about herself. She might be down but she was not out. New York had no use for her, but there were other places on the map. For instance, there was London. No, not London, Ontario. As far as the big stuff was concerned, that burg was in the Cowbarn class. London, England, was the spot. She heard that London, England, offered scope for ambition. A few years in Europe might even stop the gaps in her education. It would be like putting herself through College. Hers was a forward-looking mind. And as with set lips and ten fingers on a purse, which in spite of Aunt Lou’s legacy, was not so heavy as her heart, she put off in the Sidonia, she determinedly envisaged the future return of Mame Durrance to the land of her fathers with at least three trunks of real Paris frocks and an English accent. New York would laugh then at the little mucker on the other side of its mouth.
Conflicting opinions had been expressed to Miss Durrance about London. But in her small circle only one was able to speak from first-hand knowledge. Paula Wyse Ling had been there. The others spoke from hearsay, and in one or two cases with a little help from the imagination. But Paula Ling had lived in London a year. This rising columnist, who in the view of Mame was “the goods,” had taken pains to impress the traveller with the stark truth that in the Strand ten cents went no further than they did on Broadway.
Miss Ling had provided the adventurous Mame with the address of a cheap but respectable boarding house in Bloomsbury, where she had stayed herself, where, all things considered, she had received value for her money, and could conscientiously recommend. This enterprising girl had also given the traveller a letter of introduction to the editor of High Life, a weekly journal with an address in Fleet Street, whose ostensible business was to record the doings and sayings of Society with a large S.
As the train sped on the practical Mame began to arrange certain things in her mind. First she opened the small bag which was attached to her wrist, to make sure that the sinews of war were really there; and then, in spite of having made all sorts of calculations already, she did one more sum in her head to find out just how far Aunt Lou’s legacy would carry her. Then she searched for the address of Miss Ling’s boarding house and found it written on an envelope: Beau Sejour, 56 Carvell Street, Bloomsbury, London, W. C. Sole Proprietress Miss Aimee Valance. Terms en pension.
Somehow the information in its fulness and dignity was quite reassuring. Next the pilgrim reverently fingered the sealed envelope which bore the address: Walter Waterson, Esq., c/o High Life, 9 Tun Court, Fleet Street, London, E. C. That was reassuring too. Finally she took in her fingers her own private card and they thrilled as she did so.
Her own private card, which had been engraved just before she had sailed in the Sidonia, had a cosmopolitan air. The world was going to be impressed by it.
Miss Amethyst Du Rance
New York City, U. S. A.
European Correspondent
Cowbarn Independent
The good old Independent looked quite class tucked away in the left-hand corner. But it would have raised a sure smile in New York. That city of four-flushers had taken a lot of pains to impress upon her that Cowbarn, Iowa, was at best a one-horse burg. Perhaps London might not be quite so good at geography. And it might not be quite so set up with itself, although as far as Miss Durrance could learn that was a subject upon which opinion varied.