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Page 4
For a long, speculative moment the Salesman's gold-rimmed eyes went
frowning off across the snow-covered landscape. Then he ripped off his
glasses and fogged them very gently with his breath.
"Now--I--ain't--any--saint," mused the Traveling Salesman
meditatively, "and I--ain't very much to look at, and being on the
road ain't a business that would exactly enhance my valuation in the
eyes of a lady who was actually looking out for some safe place to
bank her affections; but I've never yet reckoned on running with any
firm that didn't keep up to its advertising promises, and if a man's
courtship ain't his own particular, personal advertising
proposition--then I don't know anything about--_anything_! So if I
should croak sudden any time in a railroad accident or a hotel fire or
a scrap in a saloon, I ain't calculating on leaving my wife any very
large amount of 'sore thoughts.' When a man wants his memory kept
green, he don't mean--gangrene!
"Oh, of course," the Salesman continued more cheerfully, "a sudden
croaking leaves any fellow's affairs at pretty raw ends--lots of
queer, bitter-tasting things that would probably have been all right
enough if they'd only had time to get ripe. Lots of things, I haven't
a doubt, that would make my wife kind of mad, but nothing, I'm
calculating, that she wouldn't understand. There'd be no questions
coming in from the office, I mean, and no fresh talk from the road
that she ain't got the information on hand to meet. Life insurance
ain't by any means, in my mind, the only kind of protection that a
man owes his widow. Provide for her Future--if you can!--That's my
motto!--But a man's just a plain bum who don't provide for his own
Past! She may have plenty of trouble in the years to come settling her
own bills, but she ain't going to have any worry settling any of mine.
I tell you, there'll be no ladies swelling round in crape at my
funeral that my wife don't know by their first names!"
With a sudden startling guffaw the Traveling Salesman's mirth rang
joyously out above the roar of the car.
"Tell me about your wife," said the Youngish Girl a little wistfully.
Around the Traveling Salesman's generous mouth the loud laugh
flickered down to a schoolboy's bashful grin.
"My wife?" he repeated. "Tell you about my wife? Why, there isn't
much to tell. She's little. And young. And was a school-teacher. And I
married her four years ago."
"And were happy--ever--after," mused the Youngish Girl teasingly.
"No!" contradicted the Traveling Salesman quite frankly. "No! We
didn't find out how to be happy at all until the last three years!"
Again his laughter rang out through the car.
"Heavens! Look at me!" he said at last. "And then think of
her!--Little, young, a school-teacher, too, and taking poetry to read
on the train same as you or I would take a newspaper! Gee! What would
you expect?" Again his mouth began to twitch a little. "And I thought
it was her fault--'most all of the first year," he confessed
delightedly. "And then, all of a sudden," he continued eagerly, "all
of a sudden, one day, more mischievous-spiteful than anything else, I
says to her, 'We don't seem to be getting on so very well, do we?' And
she shakes her head kind of slow. 'No, we don't!' she says.--'Maybe
you think I don't treat you quite right?' I quizzed, just a bit
mad.--'No, you don't! That is, not--exactly right,' she says, and came
burrowing her head in my shoulder as cozy as could be.--'Maybe you
could show me how to treat you--righter,' I says, a little bit
pleasanter.--'I'm perfectly sure I could!' she says, half laughing and
half crying. 'All you'll have to do,' she says, 'is just to watch
me!'--'Just watch what _you_ do?' I said, bristling just a bit
again.--'No,' she says, all pretty and soft-like; 'all I want you to
do is to watch what I _don't_ do!'"
With slightly nervous fingers the Traveling Salesman reached up and
tugged at his necktie as though his collar were choking him suddenly.
"So that's how I learned my table manners," he grinned, "and that's
how I learned to quit cussing when I was mad round the house, and
that's how I learned--oh, a great many things--and that's how I
learned--" grinning broader and broader--"that's how I learned not to
come home and talk all the time about the 'peach' whom I saw on the
train or the street. My wife, you see, she's got a little scar on her
face--it don't show any, but she's awful sensitive about it, and
'Johnny,' she says, 'don't you never notice that I don't ever rush
home and tell _you_ about the wonderful _slim_ fellow who sat next to
me at the theater, or the simply elegant _grammar_ that I heard at the
lecture? I can recognize a slim fellow when I see him, Johnny,' she
says, 'and I like nice grammar as well as the next one, but praising
'em to you, dear, don't seem to me so awfully polite. Bragging about
handsome women to a plain wife, Johnny,' she says, 'is just about as
raw as bragging about rich men to a husband who's broke.'
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