“I am sorry you said that, Mr. Pulitzer,” I replied in a very serious voice.

“Why, for God’s sake, you don’t mind my calling you a damned fool, do you?”

“Not in the least, sir.  But when you call me a damned fool you shatter an ideal I held about you.”

“What’s that?  An ideal about me?  What do you mean?”

“Well, sir, years before I met you I had heard that if there was one thing above all others which distinguished you from all other journalists it was that you had the keenest nose for news of any man living.”

“What has that to do with my calling you a damned fool?”

“Simply this, that the fact that I’m a damned fool hasn’t been news to me any time during the past twenty years.”

He saw the point at once, laughed heartily and, putting an arm round my shoulders, as was his habit with all of us when he wished to show a friendly feeling or take the edge off a severe rebuke, said: 

“Now, boy, you’re making fun of me, and you must not make fun of a poor old blind man.  Now, then, I take it all back; I shouldn’t have called you a damned fool.”

It was from this moment that my relations with Mr. Pulitzer began to improve.

A few days after the incident which I have just related we dropped anchor in the Bay of Naples, and Mr. Pulitzer announced his intention of sailing for New York by a White Star boat the following afternoon.  He asked me to go with him; and I accepted this invitation as the sign that my period of probation was over.

Everything was prepared for our departure.  Dunningham worked indefatigably.  He went aboard the White Star boat, arranged for the accommodation of our party, had partitions knocked down so that Mr. Pulitzer could have a private diningroom and a library, and convoyed aboard twenty or thirty trunks and cases containing books, mineral waters, wines, cigars, fruit, special articles of diet, clothes, fur coats, rugs, etc., for J. P.

We all packed our belongings, telegraphed to our friends, sent ashore for the latest issues of the magazines, and sat around in deck chairs waiting for the word to follow our things aboard the liner.

After half an hour of suspense Dunningham came out of the library, where he had been in consultation with J. P., and as he advanced toward us we rose and made our way to the gangway, where one of the launches was swinging to her painter.

Dunningham, smiling and imperturbable as ever, raised his hand and said, “No, gentlemen, Mr. Pulitzer has changed his mind; we are not going to America.  We remain on the yacht and sail this afternoon for Athens.”

He disappeared over the side, and an hour or two later returned with the chef and the butler and one of the saloon stewards, who had gone aboard the liner to make things ready, and some tons of baggage.