"Anyhow," he communed with himself, "I'm more than half way through, and shall win on the next stretch."

But his hopes, increasing as his tour of elimination progressed, began to turn to anxieties as his margin for developments narrowed until he was almost feverishly eager in his pursuit when he entered his last and final week. Everywhere he went there were the same old names and the same old faces. One or two customers had sold out, but invariably they were men. It was on his last day, when hope had waned, that he found what he hoped was a clue. Mrs. Ellen Sturgis, of Lansing, Michigan, who, according to his blue book, was "quite a lady, credit A1, tall, good dresser, very quiet, somewhat standoffish, fond of horses, because, owns her own trap outfit and nice little cob," had sold out and gone to parts unknown.

"Didn't she leave any address?" inquired Jimmy of the new owner, who was an affable, elderly gentleman given to loquacity.

"Not with me. Probably at the post office. Hope I can do as well with this business as she did, and I think I can do better. But she made money here, all right. Of course she had a society pull to start with because you see she was the widow of a man who was thought to be pretty well heeled until he died; then she had to go into business to support herself, and all the best people in the town patronized her and--anyone can do business with that kind of a pull."

Jimmy closed his order and loitered around the mirror-garnished shop until he got an opportunity to talk with a girl whose face was familiar.

"Let me see," said Jimmy, thoughtfully, "Didn't Mrs. Sturgis have a daughter who was 'most always here?"

"Nellie? Sure. You remember her, don't you? Nice looking girl with brown hair and wonderful teeth. We all liked Nellie a lot more than we did her mother. Stuck-up old dame, I called her. But Nellie was all to the good."

Jimmy suddenly developed a mad desire to get away from there. He got as far as the corner and was tempted to turn into an alleyway and do a brief but sprightly dance on his own; but decided that he would lose no time in finding the telegraph office.

"Got her! Got her at last!" he jubilated mentally. "Now for the violets, then it's me for the hotel, and the long letter apologizing for not writing sooner and--um-m-mh!--I'll tell her I broke my wrist in Ashtabula. That's a good place to break one's wrist in. No--that won't do. She'd wonder why I didn't dictate a letter to some blonde hop-o-my-thumb in some nice quiet hotel. How about the flu?

Um-m-mh--afraid that wouldn't square up with my keeping on the road.

Urgent and continual business sounds too cold--considering how warm I feel. I must never tell her the truth that I'd forgotten her name, and what she looked like, and be the b.o.o.b I am by admitting that I'd never paid enough attention to her before then to take notice of her. Girls don't like to think that anyone could possibly forget them after one good, square look. Hurts their vanity, I reckon. And she's not the sort I can write to and say, 'Kid, you made a hit with me and I'm your little stick of candy from now until I go to some place so hot I melt!' No, I've got to get some excuse that'll get by, or--go out into somebody's town park and cut my throat. I'm hit so badly it hurts! And if anything goes wrong with this deal it's--it's all off with Yours Truly. It just seems to me that would be the one thing I've ever had happen that I couldn't recover from!"

He had thought of her so much, by day and night, that he entertained a strange sense of familiarity, as if he had known and loved her all through life. So vivid were his impressions that he could not forget little inflections of her musical voice, tiny feminine gestures, stray sparkles of her eyes, the very echoes of her modulated laughter. All the weeks of his search, forever arousing in him by disappointment an increased determination, were but additions to their acquaintanceship.

All the smothered, dormant sentiment acc.u.mulated throughout his life had been exploded, as by a spark, to burst into a brilliancy that filled his entire horizon. Life was filled with dazzling and unexpected stars of shining gold. There was but one moon in all his heavens, a warm, friendly, almost mystic moon that rendered gentle and fine everything upon which it bestowed benignancy. His universe could scarcely note the extinguishment of a sun. He had never paused to a.n.a.lyze it, but had fallen upon the truth that the love of a man of thirty-four makes or breaks far more irrevocably than does the evanescent love of a boy. The latter patient recovers amazingly. The former seeks a hospital alone, and the soul of him dies!

Jimmy found less difficulty in telegraphing an extravagant order for violets to be sent to "Miss Nellie Sturgis, care Martha Putnam Hotel, New York," than he did in the composition of a suitable letter of apology.

"I've never been so darned particular about what kind of stationery I used before," he thought, as he stared at the display in a shop and cogitated over what was the best. "In fact, come to think of it, hotels have paid for all I've ever used, and most times I didn't care much whether it came in reams or in rolls. Just so it would show where the lead pencil had traveled across. About all I ever thought of a letter was that one begins writing in the upper right hand corner, writes straight across, then goes back to the left hand again and does it over until the page is full, then turns it over and does some more, and at last thinks whether he ought to sign 'Yours truly,' 'Yours sincerely,'

'Your friend,' or 'Your old pal.'"

He wished now that he had time to secure something in blue with his monogram embossed either in the corner or the center, and with some special envelopes to match. Ordinary paper, purchasable from a regular shop, didn't seem good enough to be handled by those slender white fingers he had longed to kiss. There was nothing good enough for them, and anything less than the unattainable good enough might soil them.

"Dear me! What a particular, hard-to-please old crank!" said the young thing who served him after he, the traveling ray of sunshine, had departed with the most exclusive box of paper in the shop under his arm.

The fortunate, but to Jimmy Gollop unappreciated, fact is that this world is at the present moment filled with men who have tried to write just such letters, and that probably it always has been so since the first cave man tried to write an excuse to the first cave girl on a block or stone. Probably that cave man, too, lied with laborious misgivings. Probably he pleaded everything from urgent business to a broken head, or explained that the posts were delayed because for thirty-four days a dinosaurus had been blocking the traffic. And probably, just as now, the cave girl knew he lied, pouted, sulked, and then forgave him. Perhaps in those vigorous days she swore. Perhaps some of them do now. There are things of which, alas! one can never be certain.

At 6:32 o'clock, p.m., after fortifying himself with dinner, James Gollop retired to the writing room of the hotel and began. At 7:35 o'clock James Gollop thought he could write better in the privacy of his room where there were no distractions intervened by a lot of fools who should have been born dumb, but were unfortunately gifted with speech that was devoted to subjects that were of no importance at all in comparison with the epistolatory efforts of one James Gollop. By midnight the persistent correspondent had used a box of stationery, and had composed letters enough to have formed a book in the style of the "Ready Letter Writers' Friend," containing everything from letters of condolence to congratulation, and from stern business to effusive sentiment The sole letter missing might have been one pertaining to the birth of twins. And this was what he mailed:

"DEAR MISS STURGIS: I have atoned for my seeming negligence by having some violets sent you to-day, fortunately remembering that those were the flowers for which you expressed a preference on that memorable occasion when we together visited the horse show. I am hoping to be in New York by Thursday next when I trust I shall have the great pleasure of seeing you at your hotel. Please transmit my cordial good wishes to your mother, and believe me,

"Most sincerely your friend,

"J. R. GOLLOP."

In the morning he blithely whistled and sang as he packed his samples, and, following his custom, left his route card at the desk when he paid his bill.

"Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and then home," he confided as he tossed the card across to the clerk. "I don't suppose you'll get any mail for me; but one never knows what the management of the biggest chocolate company on earth might do. So I always play safe. Business first! That's my motto. Got it hung on the lattice in my arbor in the garden down home in Maryland. Keeps me from forgetting that I'm a drummer instead of a millionaire and that I owe my feed to the firm that gives me work. So long! Wish you house full and that you keep full too. Good-bye!"

He danced his merry way through Harrisburg so ebulliently that a string of dazed patrons breathed not until after he had gone, and in Philadelphia outdid all his former efforts and doubled his previous orders. The world was filled with glory and happiness. New York was but a little way distant and above it there arched a sky of promise. He returned to his hotel that evening and was handed two telegrams. The first was from his firm and read:

"Mrs. Ellen Sturgis, formerly Lansing, opening new place in Easton, Pennsylvania, wishes you to take full order. Important."

The second was from the New York florists:

"Must be mistaken address. Miss Nellie Sturgis unknown at Martha Putnam. Please advise."

For a moment he was stunned, then his optimism, buoying him above all rebuffs, caused him to laugh at himself.

"Poor girl! Something happened! The New York studio, and the lessons in painting by that chap with the crazy name blew up and she's had to go back to work. Sorry! But--by heck--if she wants to take lessons in painting she shall have a chance some day if I have to teach her myself!

Wonder what happened to the old lady's bank roll? Must have been something unexpected. Hard luck! Will I go to Easton? By the first train unless they've got an aeroplane service!"

At an early hour on the following forenoon Jimmy stood outside a shop in the fashionable quarter of Easton and read the neat sign:

The Elite Confectionery will occupy these premises Dec. 10th.

Fittings and decorations being done by Merthyn Cabinet Co.

Eagerly he advanced to the open door through which the sounds of industrious hammering and sawing issued, and paused for a moment to admire the growing interior.

"She's going to have a nice place, all right," he thought. "It's harmonious and strictly first cla.s.s. That's the way to do it."

He spoke to a man who was polishing some newly laid tile, who replied, "Mrs. Sturgis? I think she's in her office. It's straight back through the door. She was there a minute ago, with her daughter."

Not Mercury of the winged heels advanced more swiftly than did Jimmy Gollop, nor was Mercury's heart ever fluttering so gladly. In a disorderly little office, plainly make-shift for the time being, sat the proprietress whom he instantly recognized as "Mrs. Sturgis, formerly of Lansing," and at a littered table beside her, checking up a collection of bills, sat a redheaded girl wearing gla.s.ses and whose honest face was illuminated by a friendly grin showing fine teeth, but who Jimmy remembered as one always to be seen behind the counter in Lansing.

"I hope you remember me too, Mr. Gollop," she said, after he had automatically shaken hands with her mother. "I'm Nellie Sturgis. The one you used to call 'Sturgis Number Two,'" and the friendly simper she gave him was about as welcome as a punctured tire in a road race.

CHAPTER V

Had Jim Gollop kept a diary, the entries for certain dates might have ran thus: "Friday: Stood all day in front of Martha Putnam Hotel, waiting for Candy Girl to come in or out. Very observant small boys in neighborhood, and policeman who begins to suspect. No luck.

"Sat.u.r.day: Stood all day in front of Martha Putnam hotel, waiting for Candy Girl to come in or out. Small boys a nuisance. Policeman asked me if I'd lost anything in that neighborhood. No luck.

"Sunday: Stood all day in front of Martha Putnam hotel waiting for Candy Girl to come in or out. Boys not so bad. New cop asks questions. Gave new cop a five.

"Monday: Got to Martha Putnam early, and at ten o'clock saw taxi arrive and ducked across street, and----"

He never could have written the rest of it; for from the taxi there descended a young lady who handed a light suit case to the porter, asked him to pay the bill, and would have entered the Martha Putnam had she not discovered a man nearly blocking her path, with an extended hand, and with an ingratiating smile on his face, who said, "How lucky to meet you just as I was about to leave. How are you?"

The policeman on the corner grinned, pulled his mustache, winked at himself, jingled the change in his pocket left from that grateful five, and then swung up his hand to caution the taxi driver as the latter turned into the cross street.

"You're a nice one, I must say," she remarked, half petulantly. "You might at least have dropped me a note to ask how I am getting along, and whether I am industrious, and all that rot! But did you? No! You took me to the horse show, and back to the hotel, and then vanished as if you had withdrawn yourself into your musty old sh.e.l.l!"

It was on the very tip of his tongue to tell her there on the street of his long days and nights of hope and fear, of his terrible remissness of memory, and of his desperation; but he checked himself in time and expostulated, "I did write you!" and then, his moment of honesty pa.s.sing to the tortuous ways of diplomacy asked, "Didn't you get the letter?" And he inquired as sincerely as if he did not already know that this was an impossibility because he had not addressed it to her real name, whatever that might be.

"No," she said, "I didn't." But he saw by her glance of indignation toward the hotel entrance that she believed someone therein remiss, and credited him with thoughtfulness. His spirits raised and he was himself once more, fencing as best he might for an opening.

"Well, it doesn't matter, now that I've found you," he said with such profound gladness in his voice that it caused her to glance at him, half bewildered, and half curiously, and then to play her own part, as if to prevent him from betraying too much.