He rather liked the girl whose father had made money. Yes, it so seemed—more than either of the other two. A match with her on the surface seemed more practical. But for some reason she did not reply within the time to the letter he had written her. Oh, if he could only have courted her; could have been in the position to have seen her of a warm night; to have said to her: "——." Poor Jean Baptiste your life might not have later come to what it did....
He waited—but in vain. October was drawing dangerously near when at last he left for somewhere. Indeed he had not a complete idea where, but of one thing he had concluded, when he returned he would bring the bride-to-be.
At Omaha he made up his mind. The girl whose father had made money had had her chance and failed. He regretted it very much, but this was a business proposition, and he had two thousand dollars at stake that he would lose if he failed to get some one to file on that quarter section he had provided, on October first.
He was rather disturbed over the idea. He really would have preferred a little more sentiment—but time had become the expedient. "Of course," he argued, as he sped toward Chicago, "I'll be awfully good to the one I choose, so if it is a little out of the ordinary—why, I'll try to make up for it when she is mine."
With this consolation he arrived in Chicago, wishing that the girl who lived two hundred miles south of Omaha and whose father was well-to-do had replied to his letter. He really had chosen her out of the three. However, he resigned himself to the inevitable—one of the other two.
He left the train and boarded the South Side L. He got off again at Thirty-first Street, and found what he had always found before, State Street and Negroes. He was not interested in either this time. He had sent a telegram to New York from Omaha to the effect that he was headed for Chicago. It was to the maid, for she had drawn second choice. He planned to meet her at the number her dear friend—and the match maker, lived.
So it was to this number he now hurried.
"Oh, Mr. Baptiste," cried this little woman, whose name happened to be Rankin, and she was an old maid. She gave him her little hand, and was "delighted" to see him.
"And you've come! Miss Pitt will be so glad! She has talked of nobody but Mr. Baptiste this summer. Oh, I'm so glad you have come!" and she shook his hand again.
"I sent her a telegram that I was coming, and I trust she will let me know...."