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 XXI

IN REAL AMERICA

It was in meeting again the hotel proprietor, when I went back to pay him my debt, that I first realized what a summer in the land of promise had done for me. He did not know me at all. Thinking it quite natural he should not remember one among the thousands he saw yearly, I tried to recall myself to his memory.

"You don't mean to say," he cried, "that you are the child who was here a few months ago! Have you been ill?"

"No."

"Then what have you done to yourself?"

I had not done anything to myself, but the work and the heat had robbed me of all my colour, of half my hair, and of pounds of weight.

At the French home my fellow-inmates were mostly of the servant class. They were very kind to me: they made my bed, swept my room, washed my hair, did my little mending, and even brought me sweets. They expressed the hope that I should meet some nice American who would offer me marriage, yet they confessed