and you can rattle them a little and make a guess at the size, but you can’t ever open them and prove them—­until the money is paid down and gone forever from your hands.  But goodness me!” she cried, brightening perceptibly; “if you were to put an advertisement in the biggest newspaper in the biggest city in the world, saying:  ’Every person who has ever written an indiscreet letter in his life is hereby invited to attend a mass-meeting’—­and if people would really go—­you’d see the most distinguished public gathering that you ever saw in your life!  Bishops and Judges and Statesmen and Beautiful Society Women and Little Old White-Haired Mothers—­everybody, in fact, who had ever had red blood enough at least once in his life to write down in cold black and white the one vital, quivering, questioning fact that happened to mean the most to him at that moment!  But your ‘Honey’ and your ‘Dolly Girl’ and your ‘Pink-Fingered Precious’ nonsense!  Why, it isn’t real!  Why, it doesn’t even make sense!”

Again the Youngish Girl’s laughter rang out in light, joyous, utterly superficial appreciation.

Even the serious Traveling Salesman succumbed at last.

“Oh, yes, I know it sounds comic,” he acknowledged wryly.  “Sounds like something out of a summer vaudeville show or a cheap Sunday supplement.  But I don’t suppose it sounded so specially blamed comic to the widow.  I reckon she found it plenty-heap indiscreet enough to suit her.  Oh, of course,” he added hastily, “I know, and Martha knows that Thomkins wasn’t at all that kind of a fool.  And yet, after all—­when you really settle right down to think about it, Thomkins’ name was easily ‘Tommy,’ and Thursday sure enough was his day in New Haven, and it was a yard of red flannel that Martha had asked him to bring home to her—­not the scarlet automobile veil that they found in his pocket.  But ‘Martha,’ I says, of course, ’Martha, it sure does beat all how we fellows that travel round so much in cars and trains are always and forever picking up automobile veils—­dozens of them, dozens—­red, blue, pink, yellow—­why, I wouldn’t wonder if my wife had as many as thirty-four tucked away in her top bureau drawer!’—­’I wouldn’t wonder,’ says Martha, stooping lower and lower over Thomkins’s blue cotton shirt that she’s trying to cut down into rompers for the baby.  ‘And, Martha,’ I says, ’that letter is just a joke.  One of the boys sure put it up on him!’—­’Why, of course,’ says Martha, with her mouth all puckered up crooked, as though a kid had stitched it on the machine.  ‘Why, of course!  How dared you think—­’”

Forking one bushy eyebrow, the Salesman turned and stared quizzically off into space.