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With her chin lifting suddenly in a burst of softly uproarious delight, the Youngish Girl turned her head half-way around and raised her narrow, black-gloved hands to push a tortoise-shell pin into place.

“Why, it’s perfectly simple,” she explained. “It’s just three puffs, and two curls, and then a twist.”

“And then a twist?” quizzed the Traveling Salesman earnestly, jotting down the memorandum very carefully on the shiny black surface of his sample-case. “Oh, I hope I ain’t been too familiar,” he added, with sudden contriteness. “Maybe I ought to have introduced myself first. My name’s Clifford. I’m a drummer for Sayles & Sayles. Maine and the Maritime Provinces–that’s my route. Boston’s the home office. Ever been in Halifax?” he quizzed a trifle proudly. “Do an awful big business in Halifax! Happen to know the Emporium store? The London, Liverpool, and Halifax Emporium?”

The Youngish Girl bit her lip for a second before she answered. Then, very quietly, “Y-e-s,” she said, “I know the Emporium–slightly. That is–I–own the block that the Emporium is in.”

“Gee!” said the Traveling Salesman. “Oh, gee! Now I know I talk too much!”

In nervously apologetic acquiescence the Young Electrician reached up a lean, clever, mechanical hand and smouched one more streak of black across his forehead in a desperate effort to reduce his tousled yellow hair to the particular smoothness that befitted the presence of a lady who owned a business block in any city whatsoever.

“My father owned a store in Malden, once,” he stammered, just a trifle wistfully, “but it burnt down, and there wasn’t any insurance. We always were a powerfully unlucky family. Nothing much ever came our way!”

Even as he spoke, a toddling youngster from an overcrowded seat at the front end of the car came adventuring along the aisle after the swaying, clutching manner of tired, fretty children on trains. Hesitating a moment, she stared up utterly unsmilingly into the Salesman’s beaming face, ignored the Youngish Girl’s inviting hand, and with a sudden little chuckling sigh of contentment, climbed up clumsily into the empty place beside the Young Electrician, rummaged bustlingly around with its hands and feet for an instant, in a petulant effort to make a comfortable nest for itself, and then snuggled down at last, lolling half-way across the Young Electrician’s perfectly strange knees, and drowsed off to sleep with all the delicious, friendly, unconcerned sang-froid of a tired puppy. Almost unconsciously the Young Electrician reached out and unfastened the choky collar of the heavy, sweltering little overcoat; yet not a glance from his face had either lured or caressed the strange child for a single second. Just for a moment, then, his smiling eyes reassured the jaded, jabbering French-Canadian mother, who turned round with craning neck from the front of the car.

“She’s all right here. Let her alone!” he signaled gesticulatingly from child to mother.

Then, turning to the Traveling Salesman, he mused reminiscently: “Talking’s–all–right. But where in creation do you get the time to think? Got any kids?” he asked abruptly.

“N-o,” said the Traveling Salesman. “My wife, I guess, is kid enough for me.”

Around the Young Electrician’s eyes the whimsical smile-wrinkles deepened with amazing vividness. “Huh!” he said. “I’ve got six.”

“Gee!” chuckled the Salesman. “Boys?”

The Young Electrician’s eyebrows lifted in astonishment. “Sure they’re boys!” he said. “Why, of course!”

The Traveling Salesman looked out far away through the window and whistled a long, breathy whistle. “How in the deuce are you ever going to take care of ’em?” he asked. Then his face sobered suddenly. “There was only two of us fellows at home–just Daniel and me–and even so–there weren’t ever quite enough of anything to go all the way round.”

For just an instant the Youngish Girl gazed a bit skeptically at the Traveling Salesman’s general rotund air of prosperity.

“You don’t look–exactly like a man who’s never had enough,” she said smilingly.

“Food?” said the Traveling Salesman. “Oh, shucks! It wasn’t food I was thinking of. It was education. Oh, of course,” he added conscientiously, “of course, when the crops weren’t either too heavy or too blooming light, Pa usually managed some way or other to get Daniel and me to school. And schooling was just nuts to me, and not a single nut so hard or so green that I wouldn’t have chawed and bitten my way clear into it. But Daniel–Daniel somehow couldn’t seem to see just how to enter a mushy Bartlett pear without a knife or a fork–in some other person’s fingers. He was all right, you know–but he just couldn’t seem to find his own way alone into anything. So when the time came–” the grin on the Traveling Salesman’s mouth grew just a little bit wry at one corner–“and so when the time came–it was an awful nice, sweet-smelling June night, I remember, and I’d come home early–I walked into the kitchen as nice as pie, where Pa was sitting dozing in the cat’s rocking-chair, in his gray stocking feet, and I threw down before him my full year’s school report. It was pink, I remember, which was supposed to be the rosy color of success in our school; and I says: ‘Pa! There’s my report! And Pa,’ I says, as bold and stuck-up as a brass weathercock on a new church, ‘Pa! Teacher says that one of your boys has got to go to college!’ And I was grinning all the while, I remember, worse than any Chessy cat.