The Indiscreet Letter | Page 9

to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft, flimsy
mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not altogether falter.
"I'd had pains before in my stomach," he acknowledged good-naturedly,
"but that morning with Pa was the first time in my life that I ever had
any pain in my plans!--So we mortgaged the house and the cow-barn
and the maple-sugar trees," he continued, more and more cheerfully,
"and Daniel finished his schooling--in the Lord's own time--and went
to college."
With another sudden, loud guffaw of mirth all the color came flushing
back again into his heavy face.

"Well, Daniel has sure needed all the education he could get," he
affirmed heartily. "He's a Methodist minister now somewhere down in
Georgia--and, educated 'way up to the top notch, he don't make no
more than $650 a year. $650!--oh, glory! Why, Daniel's piazza on his
new house cost him $175, and his wife's last hospital bill was $250, and
just one dentist alone gaffed him sixty-five dollars for straightening his
oldest girl's teeth!"
"Not sixty-five?" gasped the Young Electrician in acute dismay. "Why,
two of my kids have got to have it done! Oh, come now--you're
joshing!"
"I'm not either joshing," cried the Traveling Salesman. "Sure it was
sixty-five dollars. Here's the receipted bill for it right here in my
pocket." Brusquely he reached out and snatched the paper back again.
"Oh, no, I beg your pardon. That's the receipt for the piazza.--What? It
isn't? For the hospital bill then?--Oh, hang! Well, never mind. It was
sixty-five dollars. I tell you I've got it somewhere."
"Oh--you--paid--for--them--all, did you?" quizzed the Youngish Girl
before she had time to think.
"No, indeed!" lied the Traveling Salesman loyally. "But $650 a year?
What can a family man do with that? Why, I earned that much before I
was twenty-one! Why, there wasn't a moment after I quit school and
went to work that I wasn't earning real money! From the first night I
stood on a street corner with a gasoline torch, hawking rasin-seeders,
up to last night when I got an eight-hundred-dollar raise in my salary,
there ain't been a single moment in my life when I couldn't have sold
you my boots; and if you'd buncoed my boots away from me I'd have
sold you my stockings; and if you'd buncoed my stockings away from
me I'd have rented you the privilege of jumping on my bare toes. And I
ain't never missed a meal yet--though once in my life I was forty-eight
hours late for one!--Oh, I'm bright enough," he mourned, "but I tell you
I ain't refined."
With the sudden stopping of the train the little child in the Young
Electrician's lap woke fretfully. Then, as the bumpy cars switched

laboriously into a siding, and the engine went puffing off alone on
some noncommittal errand of its own, the Young Electrician rose and
stretched himself and peered out of the window into the acres and acres
of snow, and bent down suddenly and swung the child to his shoulder,
then, sauntering down the aisle to the door, jumped off into the snow
and started to explore the edge of a little, snow-smothered pond which
a score of red-mittened children were trying frantically to clear with
huge yellow brooms. Out from the crowd of loafers that hung about the
station a lean yellow hound came nosing aimlessly forward, and then
suddenly, with much fawning and many capers, annexed itself to the
Young Electrician's heels like a dog that has just rediscovered its
long-lost master. Halfway up the car the French Canadian mother and
her brood of children crowded their faces close to the window--and
thought they were watching the snow.
And suddenly the car seemed very empty. The Youngish Girl thought it
was her book that had grown so astonishingly devoid of interest. Only
the Traveling Salesman seemed to know just exactly what was the
matter. Craning his neck till his ears reddened, he surveyed and
resurveyed the car, complaining: "What's become of all the folks?"
A little nervously the Youngish Girl began to laugh. "Nobody has
gone," she said, "except--the Young Electrician."
With a grunt of disbelief the Traveling Salesman edged over to the
window and peered out through the deepening frost on the pane.
Inquisitively the Youngish Girl followed his gaze. Already across the
cold, white, monotonous, snow-smothered landscape the pale afternoon
light was beginning to wane, and against the lowering red and purple
streaks of the wintry sunset the Young Electrician's figure, with the
little huddling pack on its shoulder, was silhouetted vaguely, with an
almost startling mysticism, like the figure of an unearthly Traveler
starting forth upon an unearthly journey into an unearthly West.
"Ain't he the nice boy!" exclaimed the Traveling Salesman