sixty-five dollars. Here's the receipted bill for it right here in my
pocket." Brusquely he reached out and snatched the paper back again.
"Oh, no, I beg your pardon. That's the receipt for the piazza.--What?
It isn't? For the hospital bill then?--Oh, hang! Well, never mind. It
_was_ sixty-five dollars. I tell you I've got it somewhere."

"Oh--you--paid--for--them--all, did you?" quizzed the Youngish Girl
before she had time to think.

"No, indeed!" lied the Traveling Salesman loyally. "But $650 a year?
What can a family man do with that? Why, I earned that much before I
was twenty-one! Why, there wasn't a moment after I quit school and
went to work that I wasn't earning real money! From the first night I
stood on a street corner with a gasoline torch, hawking rasin-seeders,
up to last night when I got an eight-hundred-dollar raise in my
salary, there ain't been a single moment in my life when I couldn't
have sold you my boots; and if you'd buncoed my boots away from me I'd
have sold you my stockings; and if you'd buncoed my stockings away
from me I'd have rented you the privilege of jumping on my bare toes.
And I ain't never missed a meal yet--though once in my life I was
forty-eight hours late for one!--Oh, I'm bright enough," he mourned,
"but I tell you I ain't refined."

With the sudden stopping of the train the little child in the Young
Electrician's lap woke fretfully. Then, as the bumpy cars switched
laboriously into a siding, and the engine went puffing off alone on
some noncommittal errand of its own, the Young Electrician rose and
stretched himself and peered out of the window into the acres and
acres of snow, and bent down suddenly and swung the child to his
shoulder, then, sauntering down the aisle to the door, jumped off