III

"Well, John," said I, "I haven't read a best-seller in a long time.

Maybe I've had notions about them somewhat like yours. But tell me

more about yourself. Getting along all right with the company?"

"Bully," said Pescud, brightening at once. "I've had my salary raised

twice since I saw you, and I get a commission, too. I've bought a

neat slice of real estate out in the East End, and have run up a

house on it. Next year the firm is going to sell me some shares of

stock. Oh, I'm in on the line of General Prosperity, no matter who's

elected!"

"Met your affinity yet, John?" I asked.

"Oh, I didn't tell you about that, did I?" said Pescud with a broader

grin.

"O-ho!" I said. "So you've taken time enough off from your plate-glass

to have a romance?"

"No, no," said John. "No romance--nothing like that! But I'll tell

you about it.

"I was on the south-bound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months

ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest-looking girl I'd ever

laid eyes on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you

want for keeps. Well, I never was up to the flirtation business,

either handkerchief, automobile, postage-stamp, or door-step, and she

wasn't the kind to start anything. She read a book and minded her

business, which was to make the world prettier and better just by

residing on it. I kept on looking out of the side doors of my eyes,

and finally the proposition got out of the Pullman class into a case

of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over the porch. I never

thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate-glass business go to

smash for a while.

"She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to Louisville over

the L. and N. There she bought another ticket, and went on through

Shelbyville, Frankfort, and Lexington. Along there I began to have

a hard time keeping up with her. The trains came along when they

pleased, and didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, except to

keep on the track and the right of way as much as possible. Then they

began to stop at junctions instead of towns, and at last they stopped

altogether. I'll bet Pinkerton would outbid the plate-glass people

for my services any time if they knew how I managed to shadow that

young lady. I contrived to keep out of her sight as much as I could,

but I never lost track of her.

"The last station she got off at was away down in Virginia, about

six in the afternoon. There were about fifty houses and four hundred

niggers in sight. The rest was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds.

"A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, looking as proud

as Julius Cæsar and Roscoe Conkling on the same post-card, was there

to meet her. His clothes were frazzled, but I didn't notice that

till later. He took her little satchel, and they started over the

plank-walks and went up a road along the hill. I kept along a piece

behind 'em, trying to look like I was hunting a garnet ring in the

sand that my sister had lost at a picnic the previous Saturday.

"They went in a gate on top of the hill. It nearly took my breath

away when I looked up. Up there in the biggest grove I ever saw was a

tremendous house with round white pillars about a thousand feet high,

and the yard was so full of rose-bushes and box-bushes and lilacs

that you couldn't have seen the house if it hadn't been as big as the

Capitol at Washington.

"'Here's where I have to trail,' says I to myself. I thought before

that she seemed to be in moderate circumstances, at least. This

must be the Governor's mansion, or the Agricultural Building of a

new World's Fair, anyhow. I'd better go back to the village and get

posted by the postmaster, or drug the druggist for some information.

"In the village I found a pine hotel called the Bay View House. The

only excuse for the name was a bay horse grazing in the front yard. I

set my sample-case down, and tried to be ostensible. I told the

landlord I was taking orders for plate-glass.

"'I don't want no plates,' says he, 'but I do need another glass

molasses-pitcher.'

"By-and-by I got him down to local gossip and answering questions.

"'Why,' says he, 'I thought everybody knowed who lived in the big

white house on the hill. It's Colonel Allyn, the biggest man and the

finest quality in Virginia, or anywhere else. They're the oldest

family in the State. That was his daughter that got off the train.

She's been up to Illinois to see her aunt, who is sick.'

"I registered at the hotel, and on the third day I caught the young

lady walking in the front yard, down next to the paling fence. I

stopped and raised my hat--there wasn't any other way.

"'Excuse me,' says I, 'can you tell me where Mr. Hinkle lives?'

"She looks at me as cool as if I was the man come to see about the

weeding of the garden, but I thought I saw just a slight twinkle of

fun in her eyes.

"'No one of that name lives in Birchton,' says she. 'That is,' she

goes on, 'as far as I know. Is the gentleman you are seeking white?'

"Well, that tickled me. 'No kidding,' says I. 'I'm not looking for

smoke, even if I do come from Pittsburgh.'

"'You are quite a distance from home,' says she.

"'I'd have gone a thousand miles farther,' says I.

"'Not if you hadn't waked up when the train started in Shelbyville,'

says she; and then she turned almost as red as one of the roses on

the bushes in the yard. I remembered I had dropped off to sleep on a

bench in the Shelbyville station, waiting to see which train she took,

and only just managed to wake up in time.

"And then I told her why I had come, as respectful and earnest as I

could. And I told her everything about myself, and what I was making,

and how that all I asked was just to get acquainted with her and try

to get her to like me.

"She smiles a little, and blushes some, but her eyes never get mixed

up. They look straight at whatever she's talking to.

"'I never had any one talk like this to me before, Mr. Pescud,' says

she. 'What did you say your name is--John?'

"'John A.,' says I.

"'And you came mighty near missing the train at Powhatan Junction,

too,' says she, with a laugh that sounded as good as a mileage-book to

me.

"'How did you know?' I asked.

"'Men are very clumsy,' said she. 'I knew you were on every train. I

thought you were going to speak to me, and I'm glad you didn't.'

"Then we had more talk; and at last a kind of proud, serious look came

on her face, and she turned and pointed a finger at the big house.

"'The Allyns,' says she, 'have lived in Elmcroft for a hundred years.

We are a proud family. Look at that mansion. It has fifty rooms.

See the pillars and porches and balconies. The ceilings in the

reception-rooms and the ball-room are twenty-eight feet high. My

father is a lineal descendant of belted earls.'

"'I belted one of 'em once in the Duquesne Hotel, in Pittsburgh,'

says I, 'and he didn't offer to resent it. He was there dividing his

attentions between Monongahela whiskey and heiresses, and he got

fresh.'

"'Of course,' she goes on, 'my father wouldn't allow a drummer to set

his foot in Elmcroft. If he knew that I was talking to one over the

fence he would lock me in my room.'

"'Would _you_ let me come there?' says I. 'Would _you_ talk to me

if I was to call? For,' I goes on, 'if you said I might come and

see you, the earls might be belted or suspendered, or pinned up with

safety-pins, as far as I am concerned.'

"'I must not talk to you,' she says, 'because we have not been

introduced. It is not exactly proper. So I will say good-bye, Mr.--'

"'Say the name,' says I. 'You haven't forgotten it.'

"'Pescud,' says she, a little mad.

"'The rest of the name!' I demands, cool as could be.

"'John,' says she.

"'John--what?' I says.

"'John A.,' says she, with her head high. 'Are you through, now?'

"'I'm coming to see the belted earl to-morrow,' I says.

"'He'll feed you to his fox-hounds,' says she, laughing.

"'If he does, it'll improve their running,' says I. 'I'm something of

a hunter myself.'

"'I must be going in now,' says she. 'I oughtn't to have spoken to you

at all. I hope you'll have a pleasant trip back to Minneapolis--or

Pittsburgh, was it? Good-bye!'

"'Good-night,' says I, 'and it wasn't Minneapolis. What's your name,

first, please?'

"She hesitated. Then she pulled a leaf off a bush, and said:

"'My name is Jessie,' says she.

"'Good-night, Miss Allyn,' says I.

"The next morning at eleven, sharp, I rang the door-bell of that

World's Fair main building. After about three-quarters of an hour an

old nigger man about eighty showed up and asked what I wanted. I gave

him my business card, and said I wanted to see the colonel. He showed

me in.

"Say, did you ever crack open a wormy English walnut? That's what

that house was like. There wasn't enough furniture in it to fill an

eight-dollar flat. Some old horsehair lounges and three-legged chairs

and some framed ancestors on the walls were all that met the eye. But

when Colonel Allyn comes in, the place seemed to light up. You could

almost hear a band playing, and see a bunch of old-timers in wigs

and white stockings dancing a quadrille. It was the style of him,

although he had on the same shabby clothes I saw him wear at the

station.

"For about nine seconds he had me rattled, and I came mighty near

getting cold feet and trying to sell him some plate-glass. But I got

my nerve back pretty quick. He asked me to sit down, and I told him

everything. I told him how I followed his daughter from Cincinnati,

and what I did it for, and all about my salary and prospects, and

explained to him my little code of living--to be always decent and

right in your home town; and when you're on the road, never take more

than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent

limit. At first I thought he was going to throw me out of the window,

but I kept on talking. Pretty soon I got a chance to tell him that

story about the Western Congressman who had lost his pocket-book

and the grass widow--you remember that story. Well, that got him to

laughing, and I'll bet that was the first laugh those ancestors and

horsehair sofas had heard in many a day.

"We talked two hours. I told him everything I knew; and then he began

to ask questions, and I told him the rest. All I asked of him was to

give me a chance. If I couldn't make a hit with the little lady, I'd

clear out, and not bother any more. At last he says:

"'There was a Sir Courtenay Pescud in the time of Charles I, if I

remember rightly.'

"'If there was,' says I, 'he can't claim kin with our bunch. We've

always lived in and around Pittsburgh. I've got an uncle in the

real-estate business, and one in trouble somewhere out in Kansas.

You can inquire about any of the rest of us from anybody in old

Smoky Town, and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run across

that story about the captain of the whaler who tried to make a

sailor say his prayers?' says I.

"'It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,' says the

colonel.

"So I told it to him. Laugh! I was wishing to myself that he was a

customer. What a bill of glass I'd sell him! And then he says:

"'The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always seemed

to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promoting

and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I

will relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally

connected, and which may furnish you some amusement.'

"So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. Did I laugh?

Well, say! When I got my face straight he calls in old Pete, the

superannuated darky, and sends him down to the hotel to bring up my

valise. It was Elmcroft for me while I was in the town.

"Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word with Miss Jessie

alone on the porch while the colonel was thinking up another story.

"'It's going to be a fine evening,' says I.

"'He's coming,' says she. 'He's going to tell you, this time, the

story about the old negro and the green watermelons. It always comes

after the one about the Yankees and the game rooster. There was

another time,' she goes on, 'that you nearly got left--it was at

Pulaski City.'

"'Yes,' says I, 'I remember. My foot slipped as I was jumping on the

step, and I nearly tumbled off.'

"'I know,' says she. 'And--and I--_I was afraid you had, John A. I

was afraid you had._'

"And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows."