“Now there’s Ella, for instance,” continued the Traveling Salesman thoughtfully.  “Ella’s a traveling man, too.  Sells shotguns up through the Aroostook.  Yes, shotguns!  Funny, ain’t it, and me selling undervests?  Ella’s an awful smart girl.  Good as gold.  But cheeky?  Oh, my!—­Well, once I would have brought her down to the house for Sunday, and advertised her as a ‘peach,’ and a ‘dandy good fellow,’ and praised her eyes, and bragged about her cleverness, and generally done my best to smooth over all her little deficiencies with as much palaver as I could.  And that little retriever of mine would have gone straight to work and ferreted out every single, solitary, uncomplimentary thing about Ella that she could find, and ‘a’ fetched ’em to me as pleased and proud as a puppy, expecting, for all the world, to be petted and patted for her astonishing shrewdness.  And there would sure have been gloom in the Sabbath.

“But now—­now—­what I say now is:  ’Wife, I’m going to bring Ella down for Sunday.  You’ve never seen her, and you sure will hate her.  She’s big, and showy, and just a little bit rough sometimes, and she rouges her cheeks too much, and she’s likelier than not to chuck me under the chin.  But it would help your old man a lot in a business way if you’d be pretty nice to her.  And I’m going to send her down here Friday, a day ahead of me.’—­And oh, gee!—­I ain’t any more than jumped off the car Saturday night when there’s my little wife out on the street corner with her sweater tied over her head, prancing up and down first on one foot and then on the other—­she’s so excited, to slip her hand in mine and tell me all about it.  ‘And Johnny,’ she says—­even before I’ve got my glove off—­’Johnny,’ she says, ’really, do you know, I think you’ve done Ella an injustice.  Yes, truly I do.  Why, she’s just as kind!  And she’s shown me how to cut my last year’s coat over into the nicest sort of a little spring jacket!  And she’s made us a chocolate cake as big as a dish-pan.  Yes, she has!  And Johnny, don’t you dare tell her that I told you—­but do you know she’s putting her brother’s boy through Dartmouth?  And you old Johnny Clifford, I don’t care a darn whether she rouges a little bit or not—­and you oughtn’t to care—­either!  So there!’”

With sudden tardy contrition the Salesman’s amused eyes wandered to the open book on the Youngish Girl’s lap.

“I sure talk too much,” he muttered.  “I guess maybe you’d like half a chance to read your story.”

The expression on the Youngish Girl’s face was a curious mixture of humor and seriousness.  “There’s no special object in reading,” she said, “when you can hear a bright man talk!”

As unappreciatingly as a duck might shake champagne from its back, the Traveling Salesman shrugged the compliment from his shoulders.

“Oh, I’m bright enough,” he grumbled, “but I ain’t refined.”  Slowly to the tips of his ears mounted a dark red flush of real mortification.