Electrician's jaw
warned you quite definitely that if you should ever even so much as
hint the small, sentimental word "lure" to him he would most certainly
"swat" you on first impulse for a maniac, and on second impulse for a
liar--smiling at you all the while in the strange little wrinkly
tissue round his eyes.
The voice of the Railroad Journey was a dull, vague, conglomerate,
cinder-scented babble of grinding wheels and shuddering window frames;
but the voices of the Traveling Salesman and the Young Electrician
were shrill, gruff, poignant, inert, eternally variant, after the
manner of human voices which are discussing the affairs of the
universe.
"Every man," affirmed the Traveling Salesman sententiously--"every man
has written one indiscreet letter during his lifetime!"
"Only one?" scoffed the Young Electrician with startling distinctness
above even the loudest roar and rumble of the train.
With a rather fai-
nt, rather gaspy chuckle of amusement the Youngish
Girl in the seat just behind the Traveling Salesman reached forward
then and touched him very gently on the shoulder.
"Oh, please, may I listen?" she asked quite frankly.
With a smile as benevolent as it was surprised, the Traveling Salesman
turned half-way around in his seat and eyed her quizzically across the
gold rim of his spectacles.
"Why, sure you can listen!" he said.
The Traveling Salesman was no fool. People as well as lisle thread
were a specialty of his. Even in his very first smiling estimate of
the Youngish Girl's face, neither vivid blond hair nor luxuriantly
ornate furs misled him for an instant. Just as a Preacher's high
waistcoat passes him, like an official badge of dignity and honor,
into any conceivable kind of a situation, so also does a woman's high
forehead usher her with delicious impunity into many conversational
experiences that would ha-