t to Reuben
S. Vanderpoel. We used to count up all the business he does, and all the
clerks he's got under him pounding away on typewriters, and how they'd
be bound to get worn out and need new ones. And we'd make calculations
how many a man could unload, if he could get next. It was a kind of
typewriting junior assistant fairy story, and we knew it couldn't happen
really. But we used to chin about it just for the fun of the thing.
One of the boys made up a thing about one of us saving Reuben S.'s
life--dragging him from under a runaway auto and, when he says, 'What
can I do to show my gratitude, young man?' him handing out his catalogue
and saying, 'I should like to call your attention to the Delkoff, sir,'
and getting him to promise he'd never use any other, as long as he
lived!"

Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter laughed as spontaneously as any girl
might have done. G. Selden laughed with her. At any rate, she hadn't got
mad, so far.

"That was what did it," he went on. "When I rode away on my bike I got
thinking about it and could not get it out of my head. The next day I
just stopped on the road and got off my wheel, and I says to myself:
'Look here, business is business, if you ARE travelling in Europe and
lunching at Buckingham Palace with the main squeeze. Get busy! What'll
the boys say if they hear you've missed a chance like this? YOU hit the
pike for Stornham Castle, or whatever it's called, and take your nerve
with you! She can't do more than have you fired out, and you've been
fired before and got your breath after it. So I turned round and made
time. And that was how I happened on your avenue. And perhaps it was
because I was feeling a bit rattled I lost my hold when the chain broke,
and pitched over on my head. There, I've got it off my chest. I was
thinking I should have to explain somehow."

Something akin to her feeling of affection for the nice, long-legged
Westerner she had seen rambling in Bond Street touched Betty again.
The Delkoff was the centre of G. Selden's world as the flowers were of
Kedgers', as the "little 'ome" was of Mrs. Welden's.

"Were you going to try to sell ME a typewriter?" she asked.

"Well," G. Selden admitted, "I didn't know but what there might be use
for one, writing business letters on a big place like this. Straight, I
won't say I wasn't going to try pretty hard. It may look like gall, but
you see a fellow has to rush things or he'll never get there. A chap
like me HAS