e
put Willie on the run in my write-up. Willie has handed me several
little blows below the belt that I don't like. Pretends not to have
met me, when Peter Scudder's own sister, whom I knew at the
settlement, introduced him to me; and what he did to Mabel Wright, our
cub on weddings--Oh, well, Mabel is another story. Now--that copy is
ready to turn in when I pad it. I wonder if I will get a favor from
the manager or be turned out of the tea room permanently for reporting
a fight as aristocratic as this in the sacred halls of the
Ritz-Carlton. I'd bet my shoe lacings that fifty people come here
every afternoon for a week hoping it will happen again."

"I do like this America, whose movement is so rapid," I made remark as
I set down my second cup of tea for the afternoon, this one emptied
into my depths instead of the face of Mr. Saint Louis.

"That's good, too," returned my new-found friend with a laugh as she
again wrote a word or two on the nice white paper. Then she placed her
elbow upon the table, leaned her very firm cheek on her hand, and
regarded me with fine and honest and sympathetic eyes. "I wonder what
America is going to do to a beautiful boy like you. I'm glad that you
are going to beat it to the tall timbers of the Harpeth Valley. There
are women in New York who would eat you up alive. There's La Frigeda,
alias Maggie Sullivan from Milwaukee, over there devouring you with
her eyes at this moment, and that pretty little Stuyvesant Blaine
debutante hasn't taken her eyes off of you long enough to eat her
spiced ice. I know 'em both and could land something from either one
if I introduced you in your title and very beautiful clothes."

"Oh, I beg a pardon of you that I have not the time to have an
introduction to your friends," I exclaimed with a very true regret,
because I did like that very nice woman and would have liked much to
have brought advantage to her. "In less than an hour I must 'beat' to
those 'tall timbers of Harpeth' you mention."

"Speaking of the State of Harpeth, I don't know as you'll be so safe
after all, young friend, if that is any sample of the variety of women
that flower in that classic land of the cotton and the magnolia which
I met at Mrs. Creed Payne's war baby tea the other afternoon," mused
my fine friend as I paid the _garcon_ for the very good tea. "She
is in high-up political circles down there in Old Harpeth and from the
bunch of women she was with I make a guess she is tak