She looked startled for a moment and then said:
“All right, you wait here a few minutes.”
She came back in a few minutes with her things on. I went home with her and don’t remember to have hit the ground but three times walking the four blocks. I don’t know what she said to me, but she called me Jack and in some way made it plain to me that I was outclassed. I stayed up with the bartender until he closed up that night, and we got awful chummy with a dub from New York, who had invented a new drink. He called it a “sleeper,” and I guess it was, for I did not wake up until twelve o’clock the next day. When I came down the first man I met was Johnny Morgan. He shook my hand as though he had not seen me for a year, and said, with tears in his voice:
“You are a brick, Jack, you’re a brick; how did you do it? At a meeting of the board this morning the doctor not only voted for my books, but he talked for them.”
Johnny insisted on my taking twenty-five dollars. I hadn’t said anything about the books, neither had I thought of them, but it was a case of graft. Anyway, I took the twenty-five.
Yours,
Jack.
“CAPT. JONES, I AM PLEASED TO MAKE YOUR ACQUAINTANCE.”
The Long Salesman.