“Aren’t you Mr. Wix, of Filmore?”
“I’m afraid not,” replied Wix, smiling with great cordiality. “Sorry to disappoint you, old man.”
“Really, I beg your pardon,” said the traveling man, perplexed. “It is the most remarkable resemblance I ever saw. I would have sworn you were Wix. He used to run a brokerage shop in the Grand Hotel in Filmore.”
“Never was in the town,” lied Wix.
The man turned away. Daw looked after him with an amused smile.
“By the way, Wix, what is your name now?”
“By George, I haven’t decided! I was too busy getting rid of my only handicap to think up a substitute. I’ll tell you in a minute,” and on the spur of the moment he invented a quite euphonious name, one which was to last him for a great many years.
“Wallingford,” he announced. “How does that hit you? J. Rufus Wallingford!”