prepared reply, which detailed the lad's chivalrous care for her, as a child, upon an occasion which failed to hint of an eviction.
"When next did you meet him?" the remote voice proceeded swiftly, dismissing this original incident.
"Last September," replied Joan Daisy, settling with relief upon reaching an incident which could be related almost as it had occurred. The click-click-click of the camera was stopped, the gleaming lamps were switched off, and faces, shoulders, tables, rails and walls took on the hues of daylight and were clearly to be seen. For a few seconds, she felt let down, as though she had been upheld by a tonic quality in the glare.
"I met him on Wilson Avenue," continued Joan Daisy. "I had stopped before a show window, and he stopped and looked in beside me. I noticed him and he noticed me.
"'I've seen you somewhere before,' he said to me, when he saw I was trying to place him.
"'I've seen you,' I said.
"'I've got you now,' he said. 'You were a little kid and they were'—Joan Daisy almost repeated what Ket actually had said, which was, 'they were throwing you out of a hotel.' But she recollected a passage which she had rehearsed with Elmen and she substituted, 'they were with you'—he meant my father and mother—'in a hotel where I was bell-boy.'
"'That's where I knew you,' I said.
"'Do you know who you knew?' he asked. 'Do you know who I am?'
"'No,' I said.
"'I'm Ketlar of the Echo,' he told me, and it was just nice, he was so pleased.
"'Not that bell-boy!' I said.
"'That bell-boy!' he said. 'Now he's Fred Ketlar; that's me!'
