"Not this time," she said, "I think your office is too high up."
I told Mr. Sirle the object of the trip, and asked him if he could recommend the house to which Hersom had given me a letter of introduction, and he said yes, it was a good house to do business with.
"Are you going down there right away?" he asked.
I told him yes, whereupon he picked up the 'phone, gave a number, and asked, "Is this Plunkett?"
Plunkett, it seemed was the manager of Fiske & Co., the toy firm to which I was going. Mr. Sirle seemed to know everybody. It must be fine to be known and liked by everybody as he was.
"Say, Plunkett," he said over the 'phone, "This is Sirle. There's a bully good friend of mine, Mr. Black, going over to see your line of Christmas toys. He doesn't know the first thing about toys, but he's all right. I want you to do the best you can for him. . . . All right, I'll see if Mr. Black can be there about half-past two. . . ."
I nodded assent, and the appointment was made.
Well, Mr. Sirle wouldn't hear of us doing anything until we had lunch with him, so he took Betty and me out to one of the nicest little lunches I ever had. Betty quite fell in love with him, especially when she heard the way he spoke about his little boy. She said to me, coming home on the train: "A man must be all right who loves children as he does his boy."
Well, we went to the toy house, and we bought a selection. We spent $160, as a matter of fact, but I was certain that we got an excellent assortment. We bought a lot of mechanical toys and a number of games. Mr. Sirle advised us to add air rifles, structural outfits, water pistols, and a few things of that nature which the regular jobbing houses carry, to make a big showing. He also advised me to make a good display in the window and have one counter exclusively for toys.
"Fix a train in the window, and let one of your boys keep it wound up," he added. "The little engine running around and round on the rails will attract a lot of interest. Nothing helps a window display so much as something moving in it."