"And besides," I kept on, "all the men who have ever done anything worth being interviewed for—nearly all of them, I mean—are so old that—"
He interrupted me wrathfully.
"Old men are not necessarily blind men, Miss Christie," he explained. "But we'll change the subject, if you please!"
"Anyway, it doesn't happen once in twenty years that a newspaper woman gets a scoop just because she's a woman," I continued, not being ready just then to change the subject even if he had demanded it.
"It does," he contradicted. "It's one of the most popular plots for magazine stories."
"Bah! Magazine stories and life are two different propositions, my dear Captain Macauley!" I explained with a blasé air. "I should like some better precedent before I started out on an assignment."
"Yet you are a most unprecedented young woman," he replied in a meaning tone. "I've suspected it before—but recent reports confirm my worst imaginings."
I glanced at him searchingly.
"You've been talking with mother?" I ventured.
For a moment he was inscrutable.