As Mitchell’s telephone orders piled up, day after day, Murphy began to treat him more like an employee than a “hand,” and finally offered him a moderate expense account if he cared to entertain his railroad trade.  When the young man’s amazement at this offer had abated sufficiently for him to accept he sent the office-boy around to the Santa Fe on the run, instructing him to size up Miss Dunlap and report.  It was the first order he had ever issued in the office, and the news spread quickly that he had been “raised.”

Mr. Gross took occasion to congratulate the despised underling with pompous insincerity, whereat Louis admonished him scowlingly to beat it back to his trial balance or he’d bounce a letter-press on his dome.

When the office-boy reappeared he turned in a laconic report, “She’s a peach!”

Mitchell sweated the lad for further details, then nearly strained a tendon in getting to the telephone booth.

“Hello, Miss Dunlap,” he called.  “Are you tied up for to-night?”

“I’m knot.  The k is silent.”

“Will you go to the theater with me?”

“Nickelodeon?”

“No, Montgomery and Stone.”

The lady muttered something unintelligible, then she tittered nervously.  “Those top balconies make me dizzy.”

“How about the orchestra—­sixth row?  Could you keep your head there?”

“You must own a bill-board.”

“No, it’s a bank-book; same initials, you see.  I’m an heiress.”

“See here, Mitch”—­Miss Dunlap became serious—­“you’re a good little copper-wire comedian, but I don’t know you nor your people.”

“Well, I come from one of the oldest families in Atwood, Michigan, and that town was settled over thirty years ago.”

“But you don’t know me,” the lady demurred.

“I do, too.  You’re a tall blonde, gray eyes, blue dress; you have a dimple—­”

“Well, I declare!  All right, then; seven-thirty to-night, six hundred and twelve Filbert Street, fourth apartment, and many thanks.”

Fifteen minutes before the appointed time Louis Mitchell was fidgeting nervously outside the Filbert Street cold-water “walk-up” known as Geraldine Manor, wondering if Miss Dunlap would notice his clothes.  Twelve dollars a week had starved his wardrobe until it resembled the back-drop for a “Pity the Blind” card; but promptly on the minute he punched the button at the fourth apartment.  An instant later he realized that no matter how he looked he had it on Miss Dunlap by eighty per cent.

She was a blonde, to be sure, for the time being, and by the grace of H_{2}O_{2}.  One glance convinced her caller of two things—­viz., that his office-boy did not care much for peaches, and that the Santa Fe purchasing agent had a jealous wife.  The most that possibly could be said in praise of Miss Dunlap’s appearance was that she was the largest stenographer in Chicago.  Then and there, however, her caller qualified as a salesman; he smiled and he chatted in a free and easy way that had the lady roped, thrown, and lashed to his chariot in three minutes by her alarm-clock.