from the Commercial Hotel and Gurrage."

Afterward he declared: "From the minute that girl turned her eyes full
on me and I saw how blue them orbs were, I begun to wish I had a gold
button instead of a bone one in the back of my collar. I knew she could
see that cheap bone thing right through my neck and I was willing right
then to lay down and play dead if she wanted me to, and I'm never going
to recover, never."

"Would you do--me a favor?" Jerry asked, hesitatingly.

Asking favors was a new line for her and she followed it prettily.

"Wouldn't I!" Mr. Ponk exclaimed. "Try me."

"Even his voice has a strut in it," Jerry thought. Aloud she said: "I
have business with this old gentleman and I would be much obliged if you
would tell him that Miss Geraldine Swaim is in the city and would like
to meet him."

"Why, I'll soar right over there as soon as we get to the hotel and
gurrage."

Junius Brutus Ponk looked slyly at the face of his companion as he
spoke. What he was thinking just then it would have been hard to guess.
With a flourish and curve that were wholly Ponkish the fat little man
swung the gray car up to the brick-paved porch of the "Commercial Hotel
and Gurrage."

"Why, there's York now, reading his mail! I'll go right over and tell
him," Mr. Ponk declared. "Here, George, tell Georgette to give Miss
Swaim number seven."

George assisted Miss Swaim to the hotel register and Georgette led her
to room No. 7. Georgette wanted to linger a minute, for this guest was
so unlike the usual commercial-traveler kind of ladies who sold books,
or canvassed for extracts, or took orders for crayon portraits enlarged
from little photographs; but Miss Swaim's manner gave no excuse for
lingering. Alone, Jerry closed her door and turned, with a smile on her
lips, to face her surroundings. The room was clean and cool, with a big
window overhanging the street. Jerry sat down before it, realizing how
weary the long journey had made her. Across the street, the sign of the
Macpherson Mortgage Company in big gold letters hung above a plate-glass
window. Mr.

Ponk, who had just "soared" across, was sitting in his car before it.
Jerry saw a man inside at a desk very much like Uncle Cornie's in the
Philadelphia banking-house where Eugene Wellington was busy now helping
Aunt Jerry to settle things. This man was reading letters when the Ponk
car tooted before the big window. He waved a hand to the tooter, then
put his letters aw