CHAPTER VIII
On the succeeding morning it seemed to the foreman of the shipping department of the publishers that his new marker did not manifest the same enthusiasm for his work which had distinguished his earlier efforts.
It looked to him as if Dennis handled his paint-brush with the mien of one who considered his occupation a diversion rather than a means of livelihood.
As the day advanced and Dennis located an “e” in the spot designed for an “i,” and concluded an address with Detroit in place of Duluth, the foreman was more than ever convinced that something was wrong, and asked the young man if he was not feeling well.
“Sure!” exclaimed Dennis, a degree too cheerily, the foreman thought, in view of his delinquencies with the brush, “sure; but why do you ask?”
“Well,” returned the foreman, “iv’ry thing’s wid you this mornin’ but yure head,” and he pointed out several blunders which Dennis had made.
“Sure, an’ I’m sorry for that,” he said with blushing contriteness; “it will not happen again.”
The foreman, however, had told the truth only in part, for Dennis had left not only his head behind him, but a considerable portion of his heart.
All day he continued to think about the sweet-faced woman who had listened with such gratifying attention to the story, and more than once, in his agreeable preoccupation, had he noted an impulse to substitute the address she had provided for the one demanded by the shipping invoices.
“To-night at eight,” he repeated to himself over and over, like the refrain of a popular ballad, invariably concluding, by way of chorus: “Oh, I’ll be there; oh, I’ll be there.”