“Then it’s the chance we’ve been waiting for.”

The girl scrambled to her feet and, fetching a chair, began to talk earnestly, rapidly.  She talked for a long time, until gradually the man’s gray despondency gave way to her own bright optimism.  Nor was it idle theory alone that she advanced; Mitchell found that she knew almost as much about the steel business as he did, and when she had finished he arose and kissed her.

“You’ve put new heart into me, anyhow.  If you’re game to do your share, why—­I’ll try it out.  But remember it may mean all we’ve got in the bank, and—­” He looked at her darkly.

“It’s the biggest chance we’ll ever have,” she insisted.  “It’s worth trying.  Don’t let’s wait to get rich until we are old.”

When Mr. Comer returned from lunch he found his youngest salesman waiting for him, and inside of ten minutes he had learned what Mitchell had on his mind.  With two words Comer blew out the gas.

“You’re crazy,” said he.

“Am I?  It’s worth going after.”

“In the first place no big foreign job ever came to America—­”

“I know all that.  It’s time we got one.”

“In the second place Comer & Mathison are jobbers.”

“I’ll get a special price from Carnegie.”

“In the third place it would cost a barrel of money to send a man to England.”

Mitchell swallowed hard.  “I’ll pay my own way.”

Mr. Comer regarded the speaker with genuine astonishment. “You’ll pay your way?  Why, you haven’t got any money.”

“I’ve got a thousand dollars—­or the wife has.  It’s our nest-egg.”

“It would take five thousand to make the trip.”

“I’ll make it on one.  Yes, and I’ll come back with that job.  Don’t you see this panic makes the thing possible?  Yes, and I’m the one man to turn the trick; for it’s right in my line.  I’ll see the Carnegie people at Pittsburgh.  If they quote the right price I’ll ask you for a letter, and that’s all you’ll have to do.  Will you let me go?”

“What sort of a letter?”

“A letter stating that I am your general sales manager.”

The steel merchant’s mouth fell open.

“Oh, I only want it for this London trip,” Mitchell explained.  “I won’t use it except as a credential.  But I’ve got to go armed, you understand.  Mr. Comer, if I don’t land that Robinson-Ray contract, I won’t come back.  I—­I couldn’t, after this.  Maybe I’ll drive a ’bus—­I hear they have a lot of them in London.”

“Suppose, for instance, you should get the job on a profitable basis; the biggest job this concern ever had and one of the biggest ever let anywhere—­” Mr. Comer’s brow was wrinkled humorously.  “What would you expect out of it?”

Mitchell grinned.  “Well, if I signed all those contracts as your general sales manager, I’d probably form the habit.”

“There’s nothing modest about you, is there?” queried the elder man.