"We ran off the track," he went on, after a little interval of silence. "You were telling me what I talked about last night."
"Oh, yes; I have forgotten most of it, as I said; but along at the last there were a good many disjointed things about your fight for recognition. Once, I remember, you were talking to somebody about soap."
Prime's laugh was a guffaw.
"I can laugh at it now," he chuckled; "but it was mighty binding at the time—that soap incident. I was down in a hole, in the very bottom of the hole. I had written a book and couldn't get it published; couldn't get anybody to touch it with a ten-foot pole. I had friends who were willing to lend me money to go on with, and one who offered me a job writing advertisements for his soap factory. It was horribly tempting, but when I was built, the ability to let go, even of a failure, was left out. So I didn't become an ad. writer. What else did I say?"
"Oh, a lot of things that didn't make sense; one of them was about an advertisement you said you had seen in the New York Herald. I couldn't make out what it was; something about an English estate."
Prime looked up quickly.
"Isn't it odd how these perfectly inconsequent things bury themselves somewhere in the human brain, to rise up and sneak out some time when the bars happen to be left down," he speculated. "There was such an ad., and I saw it; but I don't believe I have given it a second thought from that time to this."
"When you spoke of it last night, you seemed to be telling Mr. Grider about it. Was it addressed to you?"
"It was addressed to the heirs of Roger Prime, of Batavia, and Roger Prime was my father. If I remember correctly, the advertisers gave a Canadian address—Ottawa, I think—and the 'personal' was worded in the usual fashion: 'If the heirs of Roger Prime will apply'—and so on; you know how they go. It was the old leg-pull."
"I don't quite understand," she demurred. "What do you mean by 'leg-pull'?"