“May I introduce you to Miss Crabb of the Ringville Star, Mr. Hubbard,” Miss Stackpole asked, in a high but by no means rich voice, as she fastened her steady, button-like eyes on Mrs. Philpot.
Hubbard arose lazily and went through the process of introduction perfunctorily, giving Miss Crabb a sweeping but indifferent glance.
“There’s an impromptu pedestrian excursion on hand,” said Miss Stackpole, “and I feel bound to go. One of the gentlemen has discovered a hermit’s cabin down a ravine near here, and he offers to personally conduct a party to it. You will go, Mr. Hubbard?”
“Go! I should remark that I will. You don’t get a scoop of that item, I assure you.”
Miss Stackpole was a plump and rather pretty young woman, fairly well dressed in drab drapery. She stood firmly on her feet and had an air of self-reliance and self-control in strong contrast with the fussy, nervous manner of Miss Crabb.
Mrs. Philpot surveyed the two young women with that comprehensive, critical glance which takes in everything that is visible, and quickly enough she made up her comparison and estimate of them.
She decided that Miss Crabb had no style, no savoir faire, no repose; but then Miss Stackpole was forward, almost impudent in appearance, and her greater ease of manner was really the ease that comes of a long training in intrusiveness, and of rubbing against an older civilization. She felt quite distinctly the decided dash of vulgarity in the three newspaper representatives before her, and she could not help suspecting that it would not be safe to judge the press reporters by these examples.
The question arose in her mind whether after all Howells and Henry James and Maurice Thompson had acted fairly in taking these as representative newspaper people.
She had met a great many newspaper people and had learned to like them as a class; she had many good and helpful friends among them.
Unconsciously she was showing to all present that she was dissecting the three reporters. Her unfavorable opinion of them slowly took expression in her tell-tale face. Not that she wholly disliked or distrusted them; she really pitied them. How could they be content to live such a life, dependent upon what they could make by meddling, so to speak?