She nodded. “I know. I’m going to be a professional singer.”
“Really? Opera?”
“Heavens, no. I’m going to sing jazz on the radio and make heaps of money. Then, when I’m thirty, I shall retire and live on a ranch in Ohio.” She touched the top of her soaking-wet head with the flat of her hand. “Do you know Ohio?” she asked.
I said I’d been through it on the train a few times but that I didn’t really know it. I offered her a piece of cinnamon toast.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I eat like a bird, actually.”
I bit into a piece of toast myself, and commented that there’s some mighty rough country around Ohio. “I know. An American I met told me. You’re the eleventh American I’ve met.”
Her governess was now urgently signalling her to return to her own table—in effect, to stop bothering the man. My guest, however, calmly moved her chair an inch or two so that her back broke all possible further communication with the home table. “You go to that secret Intelligence school on the hill, don’t you?” she inquired coolly.
As security-minded as the next one, I replied that I was visiting Devonshire for my health.
“Really,” she said, “I wasn’t quite born yesterday, you know.”
I said I’d bet she hadn’t been, at that. I drank my tea for a moment. I was getting a trifle posture-conscious and I sat up somewhat straighter in my seat.