Some honeymoon! — Reading Companion

Ryder had been in the chase after the nimble dollar since he was breeched. He was a self-made man, and although he was proud of that fact he did not go around blowing about the quality of the product.

People could take him for what he was--or what they thought he was. He was not personally assertive, although he fully knew his own opinion upon any subject to which he had given thought. He did not consider it necessary to tell every person who interviewed him, or show them by his manner, that he was really too busy with weighty affairs to give their own little matter its proper attention. He seldom cared what people thought of him as long as he impressed them with his honesty of purpose, and that he was in earnest.

That is, he had seldom cared until now. But he confessed to himself, in the secrecy of his inner thoughts and the privacy of his stateroom, that he was desirous of having at least one person aboard the _Minnequago_ think of him as being every whit as good as he really was, if not a little better.

When a man's hard hit, that is about his first thought. He wants the woman to think of him as the finest and best who has ever crossed her path. And before bumping into Miss Mont as he boarded the ship, he had actually never looked twice at a woman.

She was a good sailor, and he had crossed back and forth so many times that he was only seasick when the Old Salt in the story was ill--on the occasion "that the ship went down and all hands were lost."

Ryder accepted his fate manfully on that very first time that they paced the deck together. It was not easy for Ryder to admit that he had met and fallen in love with a woman at first sight. It was opposed to all his well-established theories. At his age he considered himself case-proof.

Yet never had a woman impressed him as did Miss Mont. When they became so quickly such very good friends and she showed plainly that she enjoyed his society, and even took him into her confidence with little urging on his part, Ryder began to see that he would be tempting Providence if he went ashore at New York without letting her know just how he felt toward her.

He had nobody to consider in this matter but himself; he had no family. Miss Mont, she said, was in a similar situation.

She had been adopted by people in Manchester when she was a small child and had lived with them as their daughter until these foster parents died.

Other children had come into the family after her adoption, and they did not look kindly upon the alien. So Miss Mont had come away.

"I do not know much about my own people," she told Ryder. "Only that my mother and father are both dead. There were several of us children. We were parceled out like a brood of puppies. I know nothing now about my brothers and sisters."

So she had nobody to consider; there was no living soul to say her nay, no matter what course she took in life. To John Ryder's disappointment he found that she was on the verge of choosing a profession for which he had a strongly rooted, if narrow, dislike. Miss Mont had met some theatrical people in London. There was, indeed, a certain agent, or manager, aboard the _Minnequago_ to whom she had been introduced.

This man had told her that he could put her on the stage. She had the presence for it, and if her ability proved anywhere equal--well, his talk had inspired her with the fever for a stage career. She had done a little in a semi-professional way in London as an entertainer, and this man, Sam Marks, had chanced to see her work.

"And you know I need to work," she told John Ryder. "My bit of money won't last forever. I should dislike teaching, and I couldn't work in a shop, I know. I have a retentive memory, and I believe I should 'make good' as you Americans say, as an imitator. I really have some talent."

"You do not know what you contemplate," cried Ryder, and he was a little angry. "The theater is no place for a domestic, home-loving woman like you."

"But it will bring me more money than other work."

"It brings you a lot besides the money. It spoils a woman. It spoils a man, too, for that matter. And it is the hardest work a woman can tackle."

"Some actresses draw large salaries."