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Los ^Angeles — -from a Bungalow Qourt
had pressed their addresses and telephone numbers on us, and had extracted from us solemn promises that we would spread the news as soon as we came back, and would renew the whirlwind intimacy so abruptly severed. The thought of these eager would-be friends now hung over us rather as a threat than as a blessing. Not to inform them of our return would be the direst of discourtesies, and yet I was not fit enough for Jo to accept any outside hospitality. At last she wrote round, telling of my condition and suggesting that we might always be found in at tea-time. Then we sat back and prepared to resist the shock of an expression of sympathy as enthusiastic as the invitations. We need not have worried about the matter. To all of Jo's letters only two answers were received. Those who were eager to get the latest travelling notorieties as party exhibits to their house looked with very different eyes on a sick Englishman and his wife harbouring in one of the millions of lower middle-class dwellings lost in the immensities of the great bungalow plain. Though we had feared a too enthusiastic acceptance the apparently concerted nature of this rejection, coming on the top of so much uninvited insistence, had a cold-blooded quality that gave us a shock. We had descended among the bungalow dwellers, a decided loss of caste, although in Chicago, where we had taken a room in a cheap Swedish boarding-house, we had experienced the most warm-hearted hospitality ; in New Orleans the welcome had apparently been given to our personalities, and in San Francisco the easy good nature that delighted us had, we are sure, no reference to our lodgings. But in this Southern California, concentrated on health and wealth, the fact of illness carried a chilling suggestion of failure. There is a story of a millionaire who, having listened for a while to an old schoolfellow's tale of ill luck, presses the bell. " John," he says to the footman, " show this gentleman out. He is breaking my heart."
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