Everything was now at stake, my honour, reputation, career, fortune. For,
as chief of the Anthropological Field Survey Department of the great
Bronx Park Zooelogical Society, I was perfectly aware that no scientific
reputation can survive ridicule.
Nevertheless, the die had been cast, the Rubicon crossed in a sail-boat
containing one beachcombing cracker, one hotel waitress, a pile of
camping kit and special utensils, and myself!
How was I going to tell Kemper? How was I going to confess to him that I
was staking my reputation as an anthropologist upon a letter or two and
a personal interview with a young girl--a waitress at the Hotel Gardenia
in Heliatrope City?
* * * * *
I lowered my sea-glasses and glanced sideways at the waitress. She was
still chewing the end of her pencil, reflectively.
She was a pretty girl, one Evelyn Grey, and had been a country
school-teacher in Massachusetts until her health broke.
Florida was what she required; but that healing climate was possible to
her only if she could find there a self-supporting position.
Also she had nourished an ambition for a postgraduate education, with
further aspirations to a Government appointment in the Smithsonian
Institute.
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