Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/238

 night?" he asked in an easy, off-hand way. "I should have enjoyed it first rate, and you could have shown me a new phase of life."

The others followed his lead, not from cruelty, but because the situation appealed to their peculiar sense of humor.

"Well, we 've got almost as much of it as if we had gone," said one, comfortingly. "Miss Van Dyke's story conducted us all through the gilded haunts of the Tenderloin. She exhausted the subject, I tell you," the speaker laughed.

One of the girl's friends swore softly at this and she heard him. He would not have sworn in her presence last week, she thought. He seized his hat and left the room precipitately, missing the explanation which she now made to the assembled company.

"I can't understand your attitude this morning," she said with a dignified warmth. "I went on that assignment because it seemed to me a chance for good work. The managing editor liked the suggestion and told me to carry it out. I wrote a faithful report of what I saw, and that is all there is to it."

They listened quietly, with the mental