The Indiscreet Letter
The Railroad Journey was very long and slow. The Traveling Salesman was rather short and quick. And the Young Electrician who lolled across the car aisle was neither one length nor another, but most inordinately flexible, like a suit of chain armor. More than being short and quick, the Traveling Salesman was distinctly fat and unmistakably dressy in an ostentatiously new and pure-looking buff-colored suit, and across the top of the shiny black sample-case that spanned his knees he sorted and re-sorted with infinite earnestness a large and varied consignment of "Ladies' Pink and Blue Ribbed Undervests." Surely no other man in the whole southward-bound Canadian train could have been at once so ingenuous and so nonchalant. There was nothing dressy, however, about the Young Electrician. From his huge cowhide boots to the lead smouch that ran from his rough, square chin to the very edge of his astonishingly blond curls, he was one delicious mess of toil and old clothes and smiling, blue-eyed indifference. And every time that he shrugged his shoulders or crossed his knees he jingled and jangled incongruously among his coil-boxes and insulators, like some splendid young Viking of old, half blacked up for a modern minstrel show.
know how much you'd be willing to pay, but----"
"I can pay that for a time at least. I have a little money, and I must
find some work to do soon. Is this Mrs. O'Keefe a nice lady?"
"She ain't a lady at all," answered Dodger, bluntly. "She keeps an
apple-stand near the corner of Bowery and Grand Street; but she's a
good, respectable woman, and she's good-hearted. She'll be kind to
you, and try to make things pleasant; but if you ain't satisfied----"
"It will do for the present. Kindness is what I need, driven as I am
from the home of my childhood. But you, Dodger, where do you live?"
"I'm goin' to take a small room in the same house, Miss Florence."
"I shall be glad to have you near me."
"I am proud to hear you say that. I'm a poor boy, and you're a rich
lady, but----"
"Not rich, Dodger. I am as poor as yourself."
"You're a reg'lar lady, anyway. You ain't one of my kind, but I'm
going to improve and raise myself. I was readin' the other day of a
rich man that was once a poor boy, and sold papers like me. But
there's one thing in the way--I ain't got no eddication."
The Railroad Journey was very long and slow. The Traveling Salesman was rather short and quick. And the Young Electrician who lolled across the car aisle was neither one length nor another, but most inordinately flexible, like a suit of chain armor. More than being short and quick, the Traveling Salesman was distinctly fat and unmistakably dressy in an ostentatiously new and pure-looking buff-colored suit, and across the top of the shiny black sample-case that spanned his knees he sorted and re-sorted with infinite earnestness a large and varied consignment of "Ladies' Pink and Blue Ribbed Undervests." Surely no other man in the whole southward-bound Canadian train could have been at once so ingenuous and so nonchalant. There was nothing dressy, however, about the Young Electrician. From his huge cowhide boots to the lead smouch that ran from his rough, square chin to the very edge of his astonishingly blond curls, he was one delicious mess of toil and old clothes and smiling, blue-eyed indifference. And every time that he shrugged his shoulders or crossed his knees he jingled and jangled incongruously among his coil-boxes and insulators, like some splendid young Viking of old, half blacked up for a modern minstrel show.