"You are doing very good editorial work," she said mendaciously, "but, after all, you are only playing at journalism. The real journalist—as I know him—is a Bohemian; a font of cleverness running to waste; a reckless, tender-hearted, jolly, careless ne'er-do-well who works like a Trojan and plays like a child. He is very sophisticated at his desk and very artless when he dives into the underworld for rest and recreation. He lives at high tension, scintillates, burns his red fire without discrimination and is shortly extinguished. You are not like that. You can't even sympathize with that sort of person. But I can, for I'm cut from a remnant of the same cloth."
"Scintillate all you want to, Hetty," cried Patsy with a laugh; "but you're not going to be extinguished. For we, the imitation journalists, have taken you under our wings. There's no underworld at Millville, and the only excitement we can furnish just now is a night with us at the old farm."
"That," replied Hetty, "is indeed a real excitement. You can't quite understand it, perhaps; but it's so—so very different from what I'm accustomed to."
Uncle John welcomed the girl artist cordially and under his hospitable roof the waif soon felt at ease. At dinner the conversation turned upon Thursday Smith and his peculiar experience. Beth asked Hetty if she knew the man.
"Yes," replied the girl; "I've seen him at the office and we've exchanged a word or two. But he boards with Thorne, the liveryman, and not at the hotel."
"You have never seen him before you met him here?"
"Never."
"I wonder," said Louise musingly, "if he is quite right in his mind. All this story may be an hallucination, you know."
"He's a very clever fellow," asserted Hetty, "and such a loss of memory is by no means so uncommon as you think. Our brains are queer things—mine is, I know—and it doesn't take much to throw their machinery out of gear. Once I knew a reporter who was worried and over-worked. He came to the office one morning and said he was George Washington, the Commander of the Continental Army. In all other ways he was sane enough, and we humored him and called him 'General.' At the end of three months the idea quit him as suddenly as it had come on, and he was not only normal but greatly restored in strength of intellect through the experience. Perhaps some of the overworked brain cells had taken a rest and renewed their energy. It would not surprise me if some day Thursday Smith suddenly remembered who he was."
[Footnote: This anecdote is true.—Author.]