I did not write the “particulars” requested. I had a feeling that Campbell might consider my choice of a traveling companion a queer one and, although my mind was made up and his opinion could not change it, I thought it just as well to wait until our arrival in New York before telling him. So I wrote a brief note stating that my friend and I would reach New York on the morning of the tenth and that I would see him there. Also I asked, for my part, the name of the steamer he had selected.
His answer was as vague as mine. He congratulated me once more upon my decision, prophesied great things as the result of what he called my “foreign junket,” and gave some valuable advice concerning the necessary outfit, clothes, trunks and the like. “Travel light,” he wrote. “You can buy whatever else you may need on the other side. 'Phone as soon as you reach New York.” But he did not tell me the name of the ship, nor for what port she was to sail.
So Hephzy and I were obliged to turn to the newspapers for information upon those more or less important subjects, and we speculated and guessed not a little. The New York dailies were not obtainable in Bayport except during the summer months and the Boston publications did not give the New York sailings. I wrote to a friend in Boston and he sent me the leading journals of the former city and, as soon as they arrived, Hephzy sat down upon the sitting-room carpet—which she had insisted upon having taken up to be packed away in moth balls—to look at the maritime advertisements. I am quite certain it was the only time she sat down, except at meals, that day.
I selected one of the papers and she another. We reached the same conclusion simultaneously.
“Why, it must be—” she began.
“The Princess Eulalie,” I finished.
“It is the only one that sails on the tenth. There is one on the eleventh, though.”
“Yes, but that one is the 'Plutonia,' one of the fastest and most expensive liners afloat. It isn't likely that Jim had booked us for the 'Plutonia.' She would scarcely be in our—in my class.”
“Humph! I guess she isn't any too good for a famous man like you, Hosy. But I would look funny on her, I give in. I've read about her. She's always full of lords and ladies and millionaires and things. Just the sort of folks you write about. She'd be just the one for you.”
I shook my head. “My lords and ladies are only paper dolls, Hephzy,” I said, ruefully. “I should be as lost as you among the flesh and blood variety. No, the 'Princess Eulalie' must be ours. She runs to Amsterdam, though. Odd that Jim should send me to Holland.”