"Child of the Public," I said to myself, "what do you do now?" I had appealed to my great patron in sending for the officer, and on the whole I felt that my sovereign had been gracious to me, if not yet hopeful. But now I must rub my lamp again, and ask the genie where the unknown Mason lived. The genie of course suggested the Directory, and I ran for it to the clerk's office. But as we were toiling down the pages of "Masons," and had written off thirteen or fourteen who lived in numbered streets, Fausta started, looked back at the preface and its date, flung down her pencil in the only abandonment of dismay in which I ever saw her, and cried "First of May! They were abroad until May. They have been abroad since the day they were married!" So that genie had to put his glories into his pocket, and carry his Directory back to the office again.
The natural thing to propose was, that I should find for Miss Jones a respectable boarding-house, and that she should remain there until her trunk was found, or till she could write to friends who had this fatal address, and receive an answer. But here she hesitated. She hardly liked to explain why,--did not explain wholly. But she did not say that she had no friends who knew this address. She had but few relations in the world, and her aunt had communicated with her alone since she came from Europe. As for the boarding-house, "I had rather look for work," she said bravely. "I have never promised to pay money when I did not know how to obtain it; and that"--and here she took out fifty or sixty cents from her purse--"and that is all now. In respectable boarding-houses, when people come without luggage, they are apt to ask for an advance. Or, at least," she added, with some pride, "I am apt to offer it."
I hastened to ask her to take all my little store; but I had to own that I had not two dollars. I was sure, however, that my overcoat and the dress-suit I wore would avail me something, if I thrust them boldly up some spout. I was sure that I should be at work within a day or two. At all events, I was certain of the cyclopædia the next day. That should go to old Gowan's,--in Fulton Street it was then,--"the moral centre of the intellectual world," in the hour I got it. And at this moment, for the first time, the thought crossed me, "If mine could only be the name drawn, so that that foolish $5,000 should fall to me." In that case I felt that Fausta might live in "a respectable boarding-house" till she died. Of this, of course, I said nothing, only that she was welcome to my poor dollar and a half, and that I should receive the next day some more money that was due me.