But it seemed that Mr. Falkland Vavasour never did dine in. This applied, in fact, to all his meals. All his meals were taken out.
“But why?” asked Mame disappointedly.
“My dear young lady”—the old-timer’s shrug was so whimsical yet so elegant it sure would have made Henry Irving jealous—“one has nothing against the cook of our hostess— But!”
Until that moment Mame had not realized what a world of meaning a simple word can hold.
She was keenly disappointed. As the first tabby invaded the drawing room Mr. Falkland Vavasour passed out. A glamour, a warmth, passed out with him. Everything grew different. It was a change from light to darkness; it was like a swift cloud across the sun.
VIII
THE days to follow wrought havoc with Aunt Lou’s legacy. Mame’s idea had been to support herself with her pen during her stay in England. She had a gift, or thought she had, for expressing herself on paper; she had a sharp eye for things, she had energy and she had ideas; yet soon was she to learn that as far as London went the market for casual writing was no better than New York.
Times there were when she began to regret her safe anchorage at Cowbarn. But she did not spend much time looking back. She was determined to be a go-getter. Briskly she went about the town, seeing and hearing and jotting down what she saw and heard. And every Friday morning she mailed a packet of her observations to the Cowbarn Independent.
Weeks went quickly by. No word came from the only friend she had in the small and tight world of editors. Even Elmer P. Dobree, on whom she had optimistically counted, had turned her down. And things were not going well with her. She had not been able to earn a dollar in Europe, yet daily the wad was growing less. The time was sure coming when she would have to go home with her money spent and only a few chunks of raw experience to show for it.
Perhaps she had tried to prise off a bit too much. Wiser, perhaps, to have stuck to her job. She had been a fairly efficient stenographer and typist. But her active mind was bored. Hovering around that hard stool in the Independent office it wanted all there was in the world. Yet first New York and now London, in their sharp reality, had taught her that the world was a bigger place than she had allowed for. And there were more folks in it. There were simply millions of Mame Durrances around: every sort of go-getter, all wanting the earth and with just her chance of connecting up. But if the worst came, so she had figured it out, and she failed to click in what these Britishers called “journalism,” she would always be able to return to an office stool.