, I earned that much before I
was twenty-one! Why, there wasn't a moment after I quit school and
went to work that I wasn't earning real money! From the first night I
stood on a street corner with a gasoline torch, hawking rasin-seeders,
up to last night when I got an eight-hundred-dollar raise in my
salary, there ain't been a single moment in my life when I couldn't
have sold you my boots; and if you'd buncoed my boots away from me I'd
have sold you my stockings; and if you'd buncoed my stockings away
from me I'd have rented you the privilege of jumping on my bare toes.
And I ain't never missed a meal yet--though once in my life I was
forty-eight hours late for one!--Oh, I'm bright enough," he mourned,
"but I tell you I ain't refined."

With the sudden stopping of the train the little child in the Young
Electrician's lap woke fretfully. Then, as the bumpy cars switched
laboriously into a siding, and the engine went puffing off alone on
some noncommittal errand of its own, the Young Electrician rose and
stretched himself and peered out of the window into the acres and
acres of snow, and bent down suddenly and swung the child to his
shoulder, then, sauntering down the aisle to the door, jumped off
into the snow and started to explore the edge of a little,
snow-smothered pond which a score of red-mittened children were trying
frantically to clear with huge yellow brooms. Out from the crowd of
loafers that hung about the station a lean yellow hound came nosing
aimlessly forward, and then suddenly, with much fawning and many
capers, annexed itself to the Young Electrician's heels like a dog
that has just rediscovered its long-lost master. Halfway up the car
the French Canadian mother and her brood of children crowded their
faces close to the window--and thought they were watching the snow.

And suddenly the car seemed very empty. The Youngish Girl thought it
was her book that had grown so astonishingly devoid of interest. Only
the Traveling Salesman seemed to know just exactly what was the
matter. Craning his neck till his ears reddened, he surveyed and
resurveyed the car, complaining: "What's become of all the folks?"

A little nervously the Youngish Girl began to laugh. "Nobody has
gone," she said, "except--the Young Electrician."

With a grunt of disbelief the Traveling Salesman edged over to the
window and peered out through the deepening frost on the pane.
Inquisitively the Youngish Girl followed his gaze. Already