Jimmy found the train all that he had anticipated, and then some; but
being one of that fortunate cult who arise happily, sing in bathrooms to
the annoyance of neighbors who waken with a grouch, enjoy breakfast, and
tackle each day as if it were certain to be filled with sunshine, soon
found the position entertaining. Although he knew nothing at all about
the subject, he even indulged in a learned discussion on cattle with his
seat mate, and held his own until he suggested that if milch cows were
put in nice comfortable homes and liberally fed with condensed cream
mixed with flour paste they would give pure cream instead of pure milk.
The farmer stared at Jimmy wondering whether he was seated with an
insane man or not, and if so whether the latter might develop homicidal
mania.
"I've always believed that cows were badly treated," Jimmy explained
very soberly. "Their esthetic development isn't looked after properly.
Now milk ought to be rich, creamy, sweet, and fragrant. Feed a cow on
onions and her milk smells like onions, doesn't it?"
The farmer admitted that it did.
"Well then, here's an idea you could make a fortune out of. By Jove! I
don't believe it's ever been tried! Why not raise flowers on a dairy
farm. Pick out cows with naturally sweet and kindly dispositions. Make
nature fit nature. For instance, take a nice red cow and feed her on red
roses. Nothing but red roses. Her milk is specially bottled and sold as
rose milk. By and by, maybe, its color would be a beautiful red. It
would smell like red roses. White cows should have lilacs and lilies of
the valley. Yellow cows ought to be fed on daisies and such. Think of
the advertising possibilities. 'Try our Rose milk, or Lily of the Valley
milk or Daisy milk.' And say, what's the matter with feeding violets to
blue cows? Violet brand would of course be the favorite for blonde
women, and Rose milk for the brunettes. Make the cow's home surroundings
lovely. Don't shut her up in a filthy stall but give her a room, and a
nice bed, and pictures on the wall so she can have something to look at
besides the doggoned scenery she has to see during working hours, when
she's busy making milk and wishing the whistle would blow so she could
lay off her overalls and go home to her family. Cows, I tell you,
are----"
He turned towards his seat mate to find a vacant space and to discover a
man with wild eyes and hasty furtiveness making his way toward the door
of the other compartment, as if seeking safety.
"Well what do you think of that!" exclaimed Jimmy, sotto voice.
"Confound it. It's the darned farmers that need educating; not the cows.
I swear I believe cows have more sense of humor than some men. And I was
just beginning to get good, too!"
And then, chuckling, he consulted his watch, and began leisurely
collecting his belongings.
All his leisureliness vanished, however, from the moment when he issued
from his hotel, and he became as brisk and busy as a cricket intent on
ravaging an entire wheat field in a series of swift swoops.
"You seem to be in a mighty big hurry, Jim," complained one customer,
later in the day, "What's the rush?"
Jimmy, mopping his forehead, for the first time appeared a trifle
diffident, flushed like a school boy and then blurted, "Well, to tell
the honest truth I am in a hurry. I'm trying to clean up and catch the
six-thirty train east. You see--I don't know as there is anything to be
ashamed of--I've got to get home to my mother."
Observing that this statement provoked no ridicule, he expanded.
"I suppose I've got as fine a mother as ever lived. She's down in
Baltimore and she's due to have a birthday in just three days, and--you
know, I've been with Maw on her birthday ever since she was born! That
is--I mean ever since I was born. No sir-e-ee! Never missed once. We
always looked forward to it, Maw and I do. Seems as if it was just our
day, and nobody else's at all! Maybe it's more important to her because
it happens to be my birthday too. I go home because I want to be with
her on her birthday, I reckon, and she likes to have me come home
because it's mine. So, come rain or shine, loss of business or train
wrecks, I'm home on that day, and--and the minute I step inside the
front door, I'm--I'm just a kid again."
Two days later there leapt up the cement steps of a neat old-fashioned
house in the suburbs of Baltimore a man who had come home to "feel like
a kid again," and with a shout bolted inside to be received by a gentle
gray-haired woman whom he picked up in his arms and kissed with boyish
demonstrativeness.
"By Gosh, Maw! You're looking younger and prettier, every time I see
you!" he exclaimed, holding her off at arm's length and studying her
solicitously. "I never see you without wishing I could stay here all the
time--just you and me. All alone! Just we two."
"Jims," she said, using an old pet name, "you'll get over that sometime.
And--it's about time, too, isn't it, that you stopped courting your own
mother, and began to remember that you're grown up. You will be
thirty-four years old to-morrow and I shall be----"
"Twenty-four! Always twenty-four."
"Sixty-four!"
"Twenty-four! Don't I know? Haven't I kept count?"
"I can keep my own count. Sixty-four. I hope you didn't bring me
another foolish thing for a birthday present. I always think of that
hat!" And she lifted her fine chin and laughed amusedly.
"That hat," Jimmy expostulated, "was bought in the best shop on Fifth
avenue and the girl that sold it to me put it on to show me how well it
looked."
"It must have been the girl rather than the hat that hypnotized you into
paying fifty dollars for something that would look better on someone of
about sixteen rather than sixty."
Jimmy did not appear to take the joke in his usual good tolerance but
soberly insisted that the hat was "A peach."
"No, the trouble with you is, Maw, that you don't realize how young you
look, and how handsome you are. It's not my fault you look like twenty,
is it? I told that lady hat drummer that I was going to give the hat to
somebody that was a darned sight better looking than she was, and she
said 'How old is the lady?' and I told her I wasn't discussing a horse
and that the age was none of her business, but that if she'd think of
someone who looked twenty, and get me a hat that would be the best in
the shebang in the twenty-year-old class, and tell me the price
and----"
"Well, Jims, don't you mind what I say," she interrupted with a smile.
"You are a good son, though terribly extravagant. You bought sealskin
furs that I can't wear, and a grand piano on which I can't play.
But----" and she went over and put her hands on his shoulders and looked
into his eyes with ineffable fondness--"Jims, what you gave didn't
matter because I knew that your heart, all of it, was there in the gift!
And often, when you are away, I thank God for giving me a son so
unselfish, so loyal, so thoughtful, so true!"
There were many of Jim Gollop's customers who would scarcely have known
him then; for there was a strange softening and adoration of his rugged
face, quite as if beneath that careless, half-cynical, humorous mask
there dwelt, abashed, seldom visible, some great tenderness of soul that
now issued forth without reserve. He bent forward with a sudden
reverence, very gently, with shining eyes, and then, folding her still
more gently to his arms, kissed her white hair, and for a moment held
her very close.
"Well, Jims," she said at last, slowly disengaging herself, "your room
is just as you left it. No--not quite. I take it back. We had to remove
your discarded shoes from the bed where you left them, and I think you
left one slipper in the bath room and the other in the grate. Also some
collars on the floor, some more scattered over the dresser, and a rather
smelly pipe on a chair. Otherwise it's ready for you and Bessie has by
this time drawn your bath, and----"
"I'm mighty glad about that pipe! I thought I'd lost it somewhere
between Plattsburg and Buffalo. Funny, isn't it, how you become fond of
a particular pipe? I always liked that one. This is a real home coming!
You see that pipe was given to me by Billy Baker. I've told you about
Billy, haven't I? He's the chap that lives down in Greenville,
Pennsylvania, who used to make the same ground I did, and sold that
Florodora line. Poor chap! Married now. Got a kid he calls Arture Davis
Baker! Now if he'd called that kid Jim----"
"It might have been as foolish as you! Hurry and come down stairs. We
have chicken Maryland, oysters out of season, and corn cakes, and--don't
moon about the bath room and try to sing, Jims!" His mother thrust him
towards the stairs and as he ascended like a bell boy expecting a tip,
watched him from sight.
Jimmy paused to look through his open window of his room at a big elm
whose branches he could almost touch. "Hello Bill, old feller. Glad to
see you looking well. How's the birds' nest business this summer? Oh.
Got a dozen aboard have you, and you say mostly robins? Well, well,
well! That's good! Tell 'em to sing to me at six o'clock to-morrow
morning, will you? Thanks!"
He smiled fondly at the lawns and homely flower beds in the rear and
thrust his head far out of the window to estimate the growth of a
creeper that he had planted with his own hands. It seemed to him that
there was no home, anywhere, as homelike as this old-fashioned house
that since the death of his father he had gradually modernized inside to
suit his tastes, despite his mother's protests against his extravagance.
He rarely thought of those hard years following the death of his father,
when the home was learned to be the sole remaining asset of what had
been regarded as a fine prosperity; of how he had insisted on its
retention; of how he had been compelled to work out of school hours; of
his and his mother's reluctant surrender of the cherished dream that he
might go through Yale; of how, long after he had found employment to
support his mother, he had doggedly insisted on night study to complete
his education following the foolish traditions of nearly every old
Southern family that its male members must have a profession. Sometimes
he remembered how reluctantly he had abandoned his dream of becoming a
lawyer because he could not afford to let an opening "on the road" at a
good salary pass by; but he was secretly proud of the fact that he had
bravely concealed all the disappointment.
"My mother, our home, a few good friends, a little more in the bank at
the end of each year and something each day to give me a laugh. What
more could a man wish!" This had become his creed and he lived up to it
in all ways, even if he had to create the laugh for his own amusement.
He had gradually learned the hard lesson that a wise man cuts his suit
to fit the cloth at his disposal and was thereby content. He had learned
to lose with a grin and win without a boast.
Mr. James Gollop, despite his unserious demeanor when abroad, never
departed from his home to resume his never ending circle "on the road"
without a sigh. It was so on the day when, his birthday holiday over, he
tripped down the steps throwing a parting joke over his shoulder at his
mother, and hastened to the end of the quiet residential street to board
a street car; but in the street car and later, in the train, he sat
soberly thinking and wondering if there was no way on earth by which he
could be at home each day.
"Maw's not getting any younger," he thought to himself. "Every day I'm
not with her is one day less on my account that I can never catch up.
And all accounts sometimes come to an end when the Big Auditor decides
it's time to close them."
He threw off his brooding when he reached New York, and was the old,
alert, bubbling Jimmy when he reached his firm's headquarters, where he
was prepared to wrangle with the auditor over items on his expense list,
demand better samples than the last lot, suggest some special cartoons
for a special trade, cajole the house in sending out some special
souvenirs for some special customers, and find out from the credit man
what he thought of Jones Jobbing Co. for a little larger order. And
then, all these affairs adjusted diplomatically, he went out to make
some personal purchases. He was reflecting on the fact that everybody in
New York seemed in a hurry to get to some place or another when he was
arrested by a cheerful voice so evidently aimed in his direction that he
looked up with a start; a rich voice that said, "Well for goodness sake!
Fancy seeing you here; but of course that is foolish, because I know you
have to come here on business at long intervals. How are you?"
"Very well, thank you," said Jimmy, accepting the proffered hand and
shaking it warmly, but at the same time mentally perturbed because he
could not think of the charming young lady's name, nor whence she came.
"And I am somewhat surprised to meet you here, too."
"Oh, Mother had to come to do a lot of silly things and dragged me along
to chaperone her, I suppose," said the girl with a laugh that exposed
teeth fascinatingly small, white and regular, between lips fascinatingly
generous and well formed. "And what is more, I hate New York and like
the country, and--I'm bored stiff with tagging around into millineries,
and shops, and such. I can get enough of shops at home!"
"Of course! Of course!" agreed Jimmy affably, but feeling himself a
little pompous through his failure to remember where such a charming
creature dealt out chocolates when on her job. His mind was working like
lightning and speculated, "Plague on it all! They look so different in
their go-away-duds from what they do behind the counters with nice white
aprons and nice little white caps and nice white linen gloves and--why
can't I remember!--Where does she work? She's familiar but--ummh!--It
never does to let 'em think you've forgotten 'em, because they resent it
and knock your sales when you come around again. Isn't she the
manageress at Bodley's out in Cincinnati? No-o--I think--I think she's
at the Bijou in Pittsburgh. Ummmh! It's up to me to make her believe
I've been thinking about her ever since I sold her place my last order."
Aloud he said, "Well you're no more bored stiff than I am. And I, too,
only come to New York because I have to. Which way are you going?"
"Nowhere in particular just now," she said, "except to look in that
shop window up there. Are you interested in windows?"
"If they've got chocolates in them," he replied with a wry grin, and she
laughed.
"Chocolates? I detest them!" she exclaimed, and Jimmy knew just how she
must feel about chocolates when all day long she saw people buying them,
and sometimes gobbling them.
They looked in the window and Jimmy was glad that it was a leather show
that had not only gloves and knickknacks but some good horse furniture
as well. His companion seemed to know all about saddlery and went into
raptures over a pigskin creation; but with a sigh, remarked that she
didn't feel able to afford it, and they explored farther. She kept Jimmy
too busy mentally to permit even his agile mind to indulge in continued
speculations as to her identity. He knew that his first duty was to
prove entertaining, and in some distress as to what might be the best
tack, suddenly took advantage of a sandwich man's conspicuous overcoat
that read, "The Marvelous Age. Matinee to-day. Royalty Theater."
"Oh, I'd love to see that!" exclaimed his companion, and that gave him
his cue.
"Off we go then," he said.
"What? You take me to a theater without a chaperone? I'm astonished!"
And then she laughed as if highly amused by something extraordinary.
"Mabel," he said, gravely, "you don't know me when I'm in New York. It's
the matinee for ours."
"The 'Mabel' settles it," she declared mischievously, and went with him
gayly down the cross street leading to the theater.
Dexterously as he fished to glean from her where she worked when at
home, he was still ignorant of that important point when, the
performance over, they emerged into the street.
"Now," she said, "you can leave me at the Holland House. That is, unless
you wish to come up and pay your respects to Mother; but come to think
of it, she may not be home yet."
"No," said Jimmy, in perplexity, "I have an appointment. You must extend
my respects and good wishes. But--say! There's the big Horse Show on in
Madison Square Garden to-morrow afternoon. Can't we see that? If you
will but say 'yes,' I'll book seats for your mother, and for you, and
for me. How about it?"
"Get Mother to a Horse Show? Heavens! But--I'd like to go." She spoke
with bright wistfulness that absolutely finished him.
"Well, your mother will let you, won't she?" he asked hopefully.
"Let me see," she said thoughtfully as they stood in the hotel entrance,
and drew from her bag a tiny silver mounted appointment book and
consulted its pages. "Oh, goody! Mamma has an appointment up town that I
can easily beg off from. Yes. Do get two tickets and we'll go."
"I'll call here for you at two o'clock," said Jimmy. "Will that do?"
"Excellently. But, mind you, no box! I like to see a horse show from
close down to the ground. They don't look so dressed up and silly as
they do from the boxes. I rather suspect that the horses don't like
those in the boxes," she said with a smile.
"Agreed," he answered, and made his devoirs.
He walked briskly as far as the corner, then turned and looked back to
make certain that she had disappeared. He hastened back, intent on
gaining the desk before others had reached it, but found himself too
late. He was compelled to bide his time whilst several people
registered, and then sidled up to the desk. A very haughty young man
swung the register toward him but he ignored it and, leaning
confidentially across, said, "There's a young lady and her mother
stopping here and I can't remember their names. Perhaps you could tell
me what----"
"Sorry! There are probably fifty young ladies and their mothers stopping
here," said the hotel clerk, icily. "If you're on the square in asking
for such information, I'm sorry I can't give it; but if you've got some
lay of your own, you're in the wrong nest. This isn't the Sports
Half-way House, you know."
"But see here. I'm in earnest about this, you know, and----" began
Jimmy, and was interrupted with a curt "Sorry! Nothing doing!"
He might have argued the point had not there been another interruption
and after a moment he left, shrugging his shoulders a trifle, and
condemning himself as an ass for his failure to remember who this
"Mabel" was. The failure rendered him doubly keen, for it was a part of
his business training, self-imposed, to remember names and faces. He
went to his own hotel and for an hour ran through the pages of his blue
book. It was a peculiar creation of his own. It was strictly private. It
contained details concerning customers. It was like a highly developed
"Who's Who," diary in his trade and made interesting reading.
"Barclay, James W. 114z Chestnut, Philadelphia. Credit AAA1. Rather
stiff. Likes to be Mistered. Teetotaler. Chief entertainment, Y. M. C.
A. lectures. Home mission movements and prayer meetings. Hot stuff on
religion. Show him the Zoo. P. S. Five children, all girls, oldest named
Martha. P. S. On Oct. 14 youngest kid, Ruth, suffering from the flu.
Note--don't forget mention it when next see him and express hope she has
recovered satisfactorily.
"Barnes, Thomas R. 1627A La Salle St., Chicago. Credit fair. Called
'Tommy.' Red hot sport. Horseraces. Prize fights. Poker. (Go easy on
stakes because unless careful will boost the comein.) Likes Pommery Sec.
P. S. Likes chorus girls. P. S. Dangerous josher when loaded. P. S. When
he expresses desire to spend quiet evening skidoo. P. S. Oct.
27th--Bailed Tommy out for hitting a policeman. Policeman not much hurt,
Tommy a wreck. P. S. Jan. 15th, sent bell boy 3 a. m. to my room to
borrow fifty bucks. P. S. Jan 17--Tommy paid the fifty. P. S. Jan 19,
got Tommy off on Century Limited, and separated him from girl named
Lulu. P. S. Feb 1, letter from Tommy thanking me for separating him from
girl named Lulu.
"Coldwell, Henry J.; Mgr. Fountain Conf. Co., Savannah. Credit A1. Likes
a decent show. No legs. Moony about wife and family when away from home.
Spiritualist. Wife a blonde who likes to think she's reforming lower
classes. Grandfather old cuss named Poindexter who was defeated for
Congress by but seventeen votes. P. S. Nov. 5, great grandmother a
Fairfax of which very proud. P. S. Dec. 7, great great grandmother a
Lee. P. S. Jan. 15, great aunt a Washington. P. S. Feb. 4, great
grandmother danced with Lafayette. Mar. 15, brought ugly old painting of
joker in wig and stock at second-hand shop Bowery and expressed to H. J.
C., with note that was assured this was portrait of ancestor. Total cost
$1.15, charged exs. Mar. 23--Enthusiastic letter thanks from J. H. C. in
which says exactly like miniature portrait in possession his aunt and no
doubt of its authenticity. Mar. 28, got biggest order ever received
from J. H. C. Hope cr. man will O. K. it"
There were some names and records in this interesting book that dealt
with employees. For instance:
"Bangs, Reginald, 1 R Mohawk St., Buffalo. AA1. Sentimental cuss. Quotes
poetry. Thinks has artistic temperament. Not much business head. Place
made a success by head clerk, Miss Norah Cahill, who runs it and him as
well. Play Norah to win, for first, second, and place. P. S. Jan. 13,
gifts and hot air wasted on Norah and no good. Got to have the goods and
the prices. P. S. Mar. 4, Cahill nearly scalped me over seventeen cents
difference in accts. LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE when dealing with this
Cahill person. P. S. Cahill can be influenced by clerk named Mary
Mooney. $1.50 Dr. Exs. flowers for Mooney."
In nearly all cases where clerks or counter girls had influence on
orders, their names and foibles and identifications were carefully
registered as they were learned; and these were scattered through as
appurtenances to the different shops. "Mary Smith. Red-headed. Does
hair up like a Hottentot. Jingles with bangles and is color blind"; or
"Chief salesgirl Freda Isenheimer. Nose like prow of ship. Warts on her
neck, grin like a cellar door, teeth like an old horse. Flaps hands when
talks. Voice like saw mill and waddles like a duck lost on a desert."
And "Jenny Gray. All peach. Goo-goo blue eyes. About thirteen hands high
and chestnut in color. Well-gaited and has boss under thumb." But
although Jimmy carefully read all these and pondered each, he was still
uncertain regarding whither the name or place of the young lady he was
to entertain at the horse show. And, the most annoying part of it all
was that he, confirmed bachelor, suffered from an unwonted sense of
liking for this same girl. Her conversation seemed to him peculiarly
bright and entertaining. She looked so much more attractive than any
other girl he had ever entertained. There was something about her face,
and the line of her throat that he had discovered while surreptitiously
studying her there in the half darkness of the theater that was so much
more graceful, so much more refined, so much more beautiful than he had
ever observed in any other girl. It began to seem difficult to believe
that he could ever before have seen her, and yet failed to note such a
combination of charms. He thought he must have been blind as a bat when
he passed her by; but again he fell back on the excuse that a girl in a
shop uniform was an entirely different appearing person from the same
girl out on a holiday. He did not at all realize that his interest in
this unidentified queen of chocolates was becoming less and less of a
business nature until he finally blurted in desperation, "I don't give a
cuss where she peddles the sweets; but by gosh! I've just got to learn
her name and address because--Oh, hang it! Because!"