John Dryden was a salesman in a furniture house; perhaps the city’s finest furniture house.  Martie suspected that his pleasant, half-shy, yet definite manner, made him an excellent salesman.  He talked to her about his associates, whom he took upon their own valuations, and deeply admired.  This one was a “wizard” at figures, and that one had “a deuce of a manner with women.”  John chuckled over their achievements, but she knew that he himself must be the secret wonder of the place.  He might be more or less, but he was certainly not a typical furniture salesman.  Sometimes the manager took him to lunch; Martie wondered if he quoted the queer books he read, and made the staid echoes of the club to which they went awake to his pagan laughter.

His extraordinarily happy temperament knew sudden despairs, but they were usually because he had made a “rotten mistake,” or because he was “such a fool” about something.  He never complained of the stupid daily round; perhaps it was not stupid to him, who always had a book under his arm, and to whom the first snow and the first green leaves were miracles of delight every year.  He treated Adele exactly as if she had been an engaging five-year-old, and she had charming childish mannerisms for him alone.  He pacified her when she fretted and complained, and was eagerly grateful when her mood was serene.  Her prettiness and her little spoiled airs, Martie realized surprisedly, were full of appeal for him.

“You don’t mean that—­you don’t mean that!” he would say to her when she sputtered and raged.  He listened absently to her long dissertation upon the persons—­and for Adele the world was full of them—­who tried to cheat her, or who were insolent to her, and to whom she was triumphantly insolent in return.  She found Martie much more sympathetic as a listener.

Toward Martie, too, John soon began to display a peculiar sensitiveness.  At first it was merely that she spurred his sense of humour; he began to test the day’s events by her laughter.  After that her more general opinions impressed him; he watched her at dinner and accepted eagerly her verdict upon political affairs or the books and plays of the hour.  She noticed, and was a little touched to notice, that he quoted her weeks after she had expressed herself.  He brought her books and they disagreed and argued about them.  In summer, with Adele languid under her parasol, and Teddy enchanting in white, they went to the park concerts, or to the various museums, and wrangled about the new Strauss and Debussy, and commented upon the Hals canvases and the art of Meissonier and Detaille.

This evening he had a book for her from the Public Library; he had been dipping into it on the elevated train.

“Which ticket is this on, John?”

“Yours.”

“Well, then, you paid my dues on the other!  How much?”

“Six cents.”

She showed him the six coppers on her white palm.