The Wiley family, it appeared, had not seen a fourth of the plays which Ginger had seen; they were astonished at her energy. They had seen three of the better ones and there were one or two more which they meant to see during the winter; they did not—the parents—go out very much at night. On the other hand, they seemed to have heard a great deal of music; they had season tickets for the Symphony and the Philharmonic, and they were going that afternoon to hear a young Russian pianist whom their daughter had heard the evening before, and they spoke of art exhibits in the smaller galleries. When they first asked Ginger if she had seen any interesting pictures she thought they meant on the screen and she answered accordingly that she had been too busy seeing plays; she was relieved, an instant later, to see that they had not realized her mistake. Mary Wiley said she would take her to the Ehrich Galleries next day; there were some delectable old Dutch things there now.
Mrs. Wiley wanted to know if Ginger had seen any other parts of the east, and her husband and her daughter began to smile at her.
“What she really wants to know, Virginia,” said Mary Wiley, “is whether you’ve seen Boston?”
Ginger could feel herself coloring. “No,” she said, “I haven’t seen anything but New York—yet.”
“My wife is a Bostonian, you see, Miss Virginia,” said Mr. Wiley, “and she still has, after thirty years, a little the feeling of the Children of Israel in Egypt.” He chuckled enjoyingly and his wife defended herself gently.
“My dear Walter, you know I have become—I am—a loyal New Yorker!” She gave a very small sigh. “New York is a wonderful city; it is stupid to compare the two. Boston——”
“‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion,’” her husband quoted, teasingly. “Though it is to be admitted, Deborah, my dear, you have wept unobtrusively.”
“‘For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song,’” she flashed back at him.
Her daughter leaned over and patted her hand. “She’s sung the Lord’s song in a strange land, hasn’t she, father?”
“She has—loyally and lustily,” he laughed.