"It is," wrote Smith in reply, "one of the most soothing things imaginable for a person who is about to admit a human weakness to find his confession forestalled. Just as I had determined to confess to you my possession of frailties entirely incompatible with the conception of Richard Smith in the eyes of his ordinary acquaintances, I received your letter. It was with the delight of the reprieved client of a painless dentist that I read your admission that when such vital things as trousseaux and weddings are in question, you are very much like other girls—and perhaps even a little more so.
"I really breathe a huge sigh of relief. And with positive cheerfulness I can now proceed to divulge the secrets I have learned about one Richard Smith, Esquire, in the months which have elapsed since a certain traveler from the Far East—relatively—returned home from New York. As my somewhat cryptic rhetoric may not be clear, and appreciating your fondness for words of one syllable, permit me to state that this means you.
"Self-satisfaction, self-absorption, self-sufficiency, have had a sobering shock. For I find that for the full and perfect enjoyment of my city I myself am no longer enough. I need company—curiously, one specific and particular individual whom, having once named, I need not name again.
"Do you suppose all this can be a sort of vanity? Do you think it was my delight in the sound of my own voice, booming through the crowded streets I love like the bittern across his lonely marshes, that makes me wish you would abandon even such thrilling traffic as trousseau planning, and come back and let me boom some more? For I have found it truth absolute that New York with Miss Maitland in it is a better place than the same city peopled only by Richard Smith—and some millions of others. Do you object to my telling you this? If your mood is unusually Bostonian when you receive this letter, you will very likely hurl the fragments of it into an ashcan omitted from the map of the brown building on Deerfield Street. However, I am counting heavily on the mood and influence of the approaching wedding to help me out.
"For nobody—that is, no real girl—is inflexible when there is a wedding in the air, and your letter only proves you are a real girl—which I always thought you to be. And I'm awfully glad you are! Only think how icily unhuman you would seem if you could hold yourself superior even to a wedding, and especially to one so romantic as this of Miss Hurd's promises to be, with all the melodramatic settings of a possible elopement, a distracted mother, and the thunderously raging paternal parent of the disinherited heiress to add zest to the occasion! If you remained unmelted by all this, my next visit to Boston—which I am sorry to say cannot occur as soon as I would like to have it—would almost certainly see my calls confined to insurance agents and lawyers—or perhaps to the mythical other person referred to in your letter.
"For the other person is purely mythical, as you must some day know. Only in Deerfield Street is there the type of brown building that irresistibly attracts me. So beware of stray rings at the doorbell, for any moment it may be I. Do you believe in telepathy? And if so, do you believe in it sufficiently to think it can ring a doorbell all the way from New York to Boston? If you do, listen—and you can hear it now!
"You asked me about the onslaught upon the octopus, and I am happy to say that things are going as well as the most ardent muck-raker on the most active fifteen-cent reform magazine could wish. The suit has been put on the calendar for trial in Massachusetts, and in New York State the Superintendent of Insurance is causing more trouble than we ourselves could possibly have created. There haven't been any actual results yet, but the moral effect for us has been immense. The Eastern Conference people are no fools, and they can read the Mene-tekel on the wall even if they don't know Assyrian.
"If you have talked with Mr. Osgood, you doubtless know that we are agreed on our Boston plans. At the proper time he is to go back into his office, taking the Guardian back with him—and probably the first thing he will do after taking charge again will be to resign the Salamander. Meanwhile we sit as tight as a couple of dynamite conspirators—and at present the Guardian appoints no Boston representative and accepts no Boston business except from a few suburban agents.
"Elsewhere things are looking very much more cheerful than when I saw you; and when the rush begins to let up a bit, I shall have no difficulty at all in persuading myself that a conference with Mr. Osgood and our Boston attorneys is necessary. Until then I must do my best to forget that New York is less delightful under some conditions than—others.
"I hope you will be good enough to write me all about the wedding of Miss Hurd and Wilkinson. Somehow I cannot help regarding it as a fundamentally humorous happening—I think the picture of Wilkinson as a man of responsibilities in any actual sense is probably the cause of my amusement. But I wish them both the very best of luck, and if you think it a suitable match, I am quite willing to accept your judgment. Wilkinson always seemed to me to look quite happy and contented, and it is the popular belief that any young bachelor of such an appearance needs a woman to take care of him.