Now the various apartments where Mitchell had been calling, these past months, were opulently furnished with gifts from the representatives of the various railway supply houses of the city, each article being cunningly designed to cement in the mind of the owner a source of supply which, coupled with price and delivery, would make for good sales service.  He was greatly surprised one day to receive a brass library lamp from the Santa Fe the initial destination of which had evidently been changed.  Then came a mission hall-clock in the original package, redirected in the hand of Miss Gratz, of the C. & E.I., and one day the office-boy from the Lackawanna brought him a smoking-set for which Miss Phoebe Snow had no use.  Gifts like these piled up rapidly, many of them bearing witness to the fact that their consignment originated from Mitchell’s very rivals in the railroad trade.  Judging from the quantity of stuff that ricocheted from the Santa Fe it was Miss Dunlap’s evident desire to present him with a whole housekeeping equipment as quickly as possible.  Louis’s desk became loaded with ornaments, his room at Mrs. Green’s became filled with nearly Wedgwood vases, candlesticks, and other bric-a-brac.  He acquired six mission hall-clocks, a row of taborets stood outside of his door like Turkish sentinels, and his collection of ash-receivers was the best in Chicago.

Miss Harris continued to ignore him, however, and he learned with a jealous pang that she was giving Mr. Gross a gratuitous course of facial massage and scalp treatments.  No longer did Mitchell entertain his trade; they entertained him.  They tried to help him save his money, and every evening he was forced to battle for his freedom.

In desperation he finally went to Murphy begging quick promotion to a traveling position, but the Sales Manager told him there was no chance before the first of the year, then asked him why he had lost his grip on the Lackawanna business.

As a matter of fact, since Miss Phoebe’s rate clerk had declared himself Mitchell had slipped a few Wednesday nights, trusting to hold the Lackawanna trade by virtue of his past performances, but he realized in the light of Murphy’s catechism that eternal visiting is the price of safety.  He sighed, therefore, and called up the lady, then apprehensively made a date.

That visit issued in disaster, as he had feared.  The rate clerk, gifted with some subtle second sight, had divined his treachery and was waiting.  He came to meet the caller gladly, like a paladin.  Louis strove to disarm the big brute by the power of the human eye, then when that did not work he explained, politely, earnestly, that his weekly calls were but part and parcel of his business, and that there was nothing in his mind so remote as thoughts of matrimony.  But the rate clerk was a stolid, a suspicious person, and he was gnawed by a low and common jealousy.  Reason failing, they came together, amalgamating like two drops of quicksilver.