“But Arthur Selby is thin and bald and has a receding chin. I met him often at the—I forget the club in New York,” said Crane. “It’s more likely that he’s some reporter. He’s a snob, anyway.”
“Dear me, no, not a snob, Mr. Crane; he is the most American man I ever met,” replied Miss Moyne.
“But Americans are the worst of all snobs,” he insisted, “especially literary Americans. They adore everything that’s foreign and pity everything that’s home-made.”
As he said this he was remembering how Tennyson’s and Browning’s poems were overshadowing his own, even in Kentucky. From the ring of his voice Miss Moyne suspected something of this sort, and adroitly changed the subject.
III.
It might be imagined that a hotel full of authors would be sure to generate some flashes of disagreement, but, for a time at least, everything went on charmingly at Hotel Helicon. True enough, the name of the occupant of room 24 remained a vexatious secret which kept growing more and more absorbing as certain very cunningly devised schemes for its exposure were easily thwarted; but even this gave the gentleman a most excellent excuse for nagging the ladies in regard to feminine curiosity and lack of generalship. Under the circumstances it was not to be expected that everybody should be strictly guarded in the phrasing of speech, still so genial and good-humored was the nameless man and so engaging was his way of evading or turning aside every thrust, that he steadily won favor. Little Mrs. Philpot, whose seven year old daughter (a bright and sweet little child) had become the pet of Hotel Helicon, was enthusiastic in her pursuit of the stranger’s name, and at last she hit upon a plan that promised immediate success. She giggled all to herself, like a high-school girl, instead of like a widow of thirty, as she contemplated certain victory.
“Now do you think you can remember, dear?” she said to May, the child, after having explained over and over again what she wished her to do.
“Yeth,” said May, who lisped charmingly in the sweetest of child voices.
“Well, what must you say?”
“I muth thay: Pleathe write your—your——”