“This is mighty good of you,” said Bruce, as grateful as though he had written special letters of endorsement for him to all his friends. “Say,” with his impulsive hospitality, “I wish you could come out and visit me. Couldn’t you get away the end of August when the bull-trout and the redsides are biting good?”
“Me?” The clerk started, then he murmured wistfully: “When the bull-trout and the redsides are biting good! Gee! I like the way that sounds! Then,” with a resigned gesture, “I was never farther west than South Bethlehem; I never expect to have the price.”
He looked so efficient and well dressed that Bruce had thought he must receive a large salary and he felt badly to learn that the prosperity of such a nice chap was only clothes deep. He promised to look in on him before he left the city and tell him how he had gotten on; then he took his list and went back to the hotel prepared to spend some anxious hours in the time which must intervene before he could expect to hear from his night telegram. He hoped the answer would come in the morning, for disappointments, he had learned, were easier to bear when the sun shone.
The telegram was awaiting him when he returned from an excursion to a department store which had been fraught with considerable excitement. A majestic blonde had assumed a kind of protectorate over him and dissuaded him from his original intention of buying thirty yards of ruching for Ma Snow with a firmness that approached a refusal to sell him anything so old-fashioned, although he protested that it had looked beautiful in the neck and sleeves of his mother’s gowns some fifteen years before. Neglecting to explain that his gift was for a woman all of fifty, a pink crepe-de-chine garment was held alluringly before his embarrassed eyes and a filmy petticoat, from beneath which, in his mind’s eye, Bruce could see Pa Snow’s carpet-slippers, in which Ma Snow “eased her feet,” peeping in and out. In the end he fought his way out—through more women than he had seen together in all his life—with a box of silk hose in appallingly vivid colors and a beaded bag which, he had it on the saleslady’s honor, was “all the rage.”
Bruce took the yellow envelope which the desk-clerk handed him and looked at it with a feeling of dread. He had counted the hours until it should come and now he was afraid to open it. It meant so much to him—everything in fact—the moment was a crisis but he managed to tear the envelope across with no outward indication of his dread.
He took in the contents at a glance and there was such relief, such renewed hope in his radiant face that the desk-clerk was moved to observe smilingly: “Good news, I gather.” And Bruce was so glad, so happy, that for the moment he could think of nothing more brilliant to answer than—“Well I should say so! I should say so!”
XIV
His Only Asset
It would be a pleasure to record that Capital found Bruce’s personality so irresistible that his need of funds met with instant response, that the dashing picturesqueness of his appearance and charm of his unconventional speech and manner was so fascinating that Capital violated all the rules observed by experienced investors and handed out its checks with the cheery “God bless you m’ boy!” which warms the heart toward Capital in fiction. Such, however, was not the case.