Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/91

 all go over to the Parker House to eat some of the famous oysters.' He stopped to tell of Thackeray's visit to the same hostelry a few years before, and how the oysters were so large he insisted they looked like the High Priest's ear which Peter had cut off, and when he finally got one down, said he felt as if he had swallowed a baby. Captain Jones's face lighted up almost merrily and his mouth, which in repose looked as if it could never smile, widened.

'I must indeed...have some of these gigantic ears to eat.'

While Sears Ripley went about the building gathering together the diners, the lady editoress talked with Jones. To find herself alone with him and responsible for his amusement frightened her. Her heart raced a little and she felt secret excitement. What an unprincipled, loose young man! She had expected to hate him, but he was disarmingly without Byronic poses. Why did every one say he was such an advertiser and liked to make capital of his ill-spent life? She thought his wide-open grey eyes the frankest and in a way the most innocent she had ever seen in the head of a mature man.

He spoke to her in his suave, hesitating way, asking what she had in mind and whether the material he was willing to give her for her female magazine could not be used in such a way as to increase the sales of 'Sands of Araby.'

'I must make the thing sell. I need...the money to support myself as I am accustomed to living in Arabia. That is why I am lecturing...so exten-