"Really, I don't know," said Burnamy, with a touch of impatience.

They had not met the evening before on the best of terms. Stoller had
expected Burnamy twenty-four hours earlier, and had shown his displeasure
with him for loitering a day at Leipsic which he might have spent at
Carlsbad; and Burnamy had been unsatisfactory in accounting for the
delay. But he had taken hold so promptly and so intelligently that by
working far into the night, and through the whole forenoon, he had got
Stoller's crude mass of notes into shape, and had sent off in time for
the first steamer the letter which was to appear over the proprietor's
name in his paper. It was a sort of rough but very full study of the
Carlsbad city government, the methods of taxation, the municipal
ownership of the springs and the lands, and the public control in
everything. It condemned the aristocratic constitution of the
municipality, but it charged heavily in favor of the purity, beneficence,
and wisdom of the administration, under which there was no poverty and no
idleness, and which was managed like any large business.

Stoller had sulkily recurred to his displeasure, once or twice, and
Burnamy suffered it submissively until now. But now, at the change in
Burnamy's tone, he changed his manner a little.

"Seen your friends since supper?" he asked.

"Only a moment. They are rather tired, and they've gone to bed."

That the fellow that edits that book you write for?"

"Yes; he owns it, too."