Tom Outland's Story
come to lunch with me herself to-day, and talk to
me.
“Oh, no!” she said, blushing red as a poppy. “Why, I’m afraid you think——”
I told her I didn’t think anything but how nice she was to me, and how lonesome I was. She went with me, but she wouldn’t go to any swell place. She told me a great many useful things.
“If you want to get attention from anybody in Washin’ton,” she said, “ask them to lunch. People here will do almost anything for a good lunch.”
“But the Director of the Smithsonian, for instance,” I said, “surely you don’t mean that the high-up ones like that——? Why would he want to bother with a cow-puncher from New Mexico, when he can lunch with scientists and ambassadors ?”
She had a pretty little fluttery Southern laugh. “You just name a hotel like the Shoreham to the Director, and try it! There has to be somebody to pay for a lunch, and the scientists and ambassadors don’t do that when they can avoid it. He’d accept your invitation, and the next time he went to dine with the Secretary of State he’d make a nice little story of it, and paint you up so pretty you’d hardly know yourself.”
When I asked her whether I’d better take my pottery—it was there under the table between us—to the Shoreham to show Mr. Wagner, she tittered
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