We had black coffee together in a window-seat overlooking the harbour and the ships, and she asked me a lot of questions about the war with Spain and my service in the Dixie. She never moved a muscle when it came out I had been a quartermaster, though I could feel she was astounded at my being but a shade above a common seaman, and not, as she had taken it for granted, a commissioned officer. I was too proud to explain over-much, or to tell her I had gone in, as so many of my friends had done, from a strong sense of duty and patriotism at the time of my country's need, and consequently allowed her to get a very wrong idea, I suppose, about my state in life and position in the world. Indeed, I was just childish enough to get a trifle wounded, and let her add misconception to misconception out of a silly obstinacy.
"But what do you do," she asked, "now that the war is over and you've taken away everything from the poor Spaniards and left the Navy?"
"Work," I said.
"What kind of work?" she asked.
"Oh, in an office!" I said. (I didn't tell her I was the Third Vice President of the Amalgamated Copper Company, with a twenty- story building on lower Broadway. Wild horses couldn't have wrung it out of me then.)
"You're too nice for an office," she said, looking at me so sweetly and sadly. "You ought to be a gentleman!"
"Oh, dear!" I exclaimed, "I hope I am that, even if I do grub along in an office." I wish my partners could have heard me say that. Why, I have a private elevator of my own and a squash-court on the roof!
"Of course, I don't mean that," she went on quickly, "but like us,
I mean, with a castle and a place in society——"
"I have a sort of little picayune place in New York," I interrupted. "I don't SLEEP in the office, you know. At night I go out and see my friends and sometimes they invite me to dinner."
She looked at me more sadly than ever. I don't believe humour was Verna's strong suit anyway,—not American humour, at least,—for she not only believed what I said, but more too.