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“Why, sure you can listen!” he said.

The Traveling Salesman was no fool. People as well as lisle thread were a specialty of his. Even in his very first smiling estimate of the Youngish Girl’s face, neither vivid blond hair nor luxuriantly ornate furs misled him for an instant. Just as a Preacher’s high waistcoat passes him, like an official badge of dignity and honor, into any conceivable kind of a situation, so also does a woman’s high forehead usher her with delicious impunity into many conversational experiences that would hardly be wise for her lower-browed sister.

With an extra touch of manners the Salesman took off his neat brown derby hat and placed it carefully on the vacant seat in front of him. Then, shifting his sample-case adroitly to suit his new twisted position, he began to stick cruel little prickly price marks through alternate meshes of pink and blue lisle.

“Why, sure you can listen!” he repeated benignly. “Traveling alone’s awful stupid, ain’t it? I reckon you were glad when the busted heating apparatus in the sleeper gave you a chance to come in here and size up a few new faces. Sure you can listen! Though, bless your heart, we weren’t talking about anything so very specially interesting,” he explained conscientiously. “You see, I was merely arguing with my young friend here that if a woman really loves you, she’ll follow you through any kind of blame or disgrace–follow you anywheres, I said–anywheres!”

“Not anywheres,” protested the Young Electrician with a grin. “‘Not up a telegraph pole!'” he requoted sheepishly.

“Y-e-s–I heard that,” acknowledged the Youngish Girl with blithe shamelessness.

“Follow you ‘anywheres,’ was what I said,” persisted the Traveling Salesman almost irritably. “Follow you ‘anywheres‘! Run! Walk! Crawl on her hands and knees if it’s really necessary. And yet–” Like a shaggy brown line drawn across the bottom of a column of figures, his eyebrows narrowed to their final calculation. “And yet–” he estimated cautiously, “and yet–there’s times when I ain’t so almighty sure that her following you is any more specially flattering to you than if you was a burglar. She don’t follow you so much, I reckon, because you are her love as because you’ve got her love. God knows it ain’t just you, yourself, she’s afraid of losing. It’s what she’s already invested in you that’s worrying her! All her pinky-posy, cunning kid-dreams about loving and marrying, maybe; and the pretty-much grown-up winter she fought out the whisky question with you, perhaps; and the summer you had the typhoid, likelier than not; and the spring the youngster was born–oh, sure, the spring the youngster was born! Gee! If by swallowing just one more yarn you tell her, she can only keep on holding down all the old yarns you ever told her–if, by forgiving you just one more forgive-you, she can only hang on, as it were, to the original worth-whileness of the whole darned business–if by–“

“Oh, that’s what you meant by the ‘whole darned business,’ was it?” cried the Youngish Girl suddenly, edging away out to the front of her seat. Along the curve of her cheeks an almost mischievous smile began to quicken. “Oh, yes! I heard that, too!” she confessed cheerfully. “But what was the beginning of it all? The very beginning? What was the first thing you said? What started you talking about it? Oh, please, excuse me for hearing anything at all,” she finished abruptly; “but I’ve been traveling alone now for five dreadful days, all the way down from British Columbia, and–if–you–will–persist–in–saying interesting things–in trains–you must take the consequences!”

There was no possible tinge of patronage or condescension in her voice, but rather, instead, a bumpy, naive sort of friendliness, as lonesome Royalty sliding temporarily down from its throne might reasonably contend with each bump, “A King may look at a cat! He may! He may!”

Along the edge of the Young Electrician’s cheek-bones the red began to flush furiously. He seemed to have a funny little way of blushing just before he spoke, and the physical mannerism gave an absurdly italicized sort of emphasis to even the most trivial thing that he said.