“Oh, that’ll be all right,” said his friend, with easy optimism. “Don’t bother about it. They all know what a newspaper interview is; if they don’t, why, you can tell them when you get back.”
It was not long before Mr. Trenton found himself put down at all the principal clubs, both artistic and literary; and he also became, with a suddenness that bewildered him, quite the social lion for the time being. He was astonished to find that the receptions to which he was invited, and where he was, in a way, on exhibition, were really very grand occasions, and compared favourably with the finest gatherings he had had experience of in London.
His hostess at one of these receptions said to him, “Mr. Trenton, I want to introduce you to some of our art lovers in this city, whom I am sure you will be pleased to meet. I know that as a general thing the real artists are apt to despise the amateurs; but in this instance I hope you will be kind enough not to despise them, for my sake. We think they are really very clever indeed, and we like to be flattered by foreign preference.”
“Am I the foreign preference in this instance?”
“You are, Mr. Trenton.”
“Now, I think it is too bad of you to say that, just when I have begun to feel as much at home in Boston as I do in London. I assure you I do not feel in the least foreign here. Neither do I maintain, like Mrs. Brown, that you are the foreigners.”
“How very nice of you to say so, Mr. Trenton. Now I hope you will say something like that to the young lady I want you to meet. She is really very charming, and I am sure you will like her; and I may say, in parenthesis, that she, like the rest of us, is perfectly infatuated with your pictures.”
As the lady said this, she brought Mr. Trenton in her wake, as it were, and said, “Miss Sommerton, allow me to present to you Mr. Trenton.”
Miss Sommerton rose with graceful indolence, and held out her hand frankly to the artist. “Mr. Trenton,” she said, “I am very pleased indeed to meet you. Have you been long in Boston?”
“Only a few days,” replied Trenton. “I came up to Boston from Canada a short time since.”