said Jimmy, thoughtfully, "Didn't Mrs. Sturgis have a
daughter who was 'most always here?"

"Nellie? Sure. You remember her, don't you? Nice looking girl with brown
hair and wonderful teeth. We all liked Nellie a lot more than we did her
mother. Stuck-up old dame, I called her. But Nellie was all to the
good."

Jimmy suddenly developed a mad desire to get away from there. He got as
far as the corner and was tempted to turn into an alleyway and do a
brief but sprightly dance on his own; but decided that he would lose no
time in finding the telegraph office.

"Got her! Got her at last!" he jubilated mentally. "Now for the violets,
then it's me for the hotel, and the long letter apologizing for not
writing sooner and--um-m-mh!--I'll tell her I broke my wrist in
Ashtabula. That's a good place to break one's wrist in. No--that won't
do. She'd wonder why I didn't dictate a letter to some blonde
hop-o-my-thumb in some nice quiet hotel. How about the flu?
Um-m-mh--afraid that wouldn't square up with my keeping on the road.
Urgent and continual business sounds too cold--considering how warm I
feel. I must never tell her the truth that I'd forgotten her name, and
what she looked like, and be the boob I am by admitting that I'd never
paid enough attention to her before then to take notice of her. Girls
don't like to think that anyone could possibly forget them after one
good, square look. Hurts their vanity, I reckon. And she's not the sort
I can write to and say, 'Kid, you made a hit with me and I'm your little
stick of candy from now until I go to some place so hot I melt!' No,
I've got to get some excuse that'll get by, or--go out into somebody's
town park and cut my throat. I'm hit so badly it hurts! And if anything
goes wrong with this deal it's--it's all off with Yours Truly. It just
seems to me that would be the one thing I've ever had happen that I
couldn't recover from!"

He had thought of her so much, by day and night, that he entertained a
strange sense of familiarity, as if he had known and loved her all
through life. So vivid were his impressions that he could not forget
little inflections of her musical voice, tiny feminine gestures, stray
sparkles of her eyes, the very echoes of her modulated laughter. All the
weeks of his search, forever arousing in him by disappointment an
increased determination, were but additions to their acquaintanceship.
All the smothered, dormant sentiment accumulated throughout his lif