“Keating?” he asked. “That's funny,” he said. “I haven't seen him since—since before I was ill.”
“Yes, old Jimmie Keating. You've got nothing against him, have you?”
Channing shook his head vehemently, and Norris glanced back complacently toward the door of the dining-room, from whence came the sound of intimate revelry.
“You might have had, once,” Norris said, laughing; “we were all up against him once. But since he's turned out such a wonder and a war-hero, we're going to recognize it. They're always saying we newspaper men have it in for each other, and so we're just giving him this subscription-dinner to show it's not so. He's going abroad, you know. He sails to-morrow morning.”
“No, I didn't know,” said Channing.
“Of course not, how could you? Well, the Consolidated Press's sending him and his wife to Paris. He's to cover the Peace negotiations there. It's really a honeymoon-trip at the expense of the C. P. It's their reward for his work, for his Santiago story, and the beat and all that—”
Channing's face expressed his bewilderment.
Norris drew back dramatically.
“Don't tell me,” he exclaimed, “that you haven't heard about that!”
Channing laughed a short, frightened laugh, and moved nearer to the street.