"Got her! Got her at last!" he jubilated mentally. "Now for the violets, then it's me for the hotel, and the long letter apologizing for not writing sooner and—um-m-mh!—I'll tell her I broke my wrist in Ashtabula. That's a good place to break one's wrist in. No—that won't do. She'd wonder why I didn't dictate a letter to some blonde hop-o-my-thumb in some nice quiet hotel. How about the flu? Um-m-mh—afraid that wouldn't square up with my keeping on the road. Urgent and continual business sounds too cold—considering how warm I feel. I must never tell her the truth that I'd forgotten her name, and what she looked like, and be the boob I am by admitting that I'd never paid enough attention to her before then to take notice of her. Girls don't like to think that anyone could possibly forget them after one good, square look. Hurts their vanity, I reckon. And she's not the sort I can write to and say, 'Kid, you made a hit with me and I'm your little stick of candy from now until I go to some place so hot I melt!' No, I've got to get some excuse that'll get by, or—go out into somebody's town park and cut my throat. I'm hit so badly it hurts! And if anything goes wrong with this deal it's—it's all off with Yours Truly. It just seems to me that would be the one thing I've ever had happen that I couldn't recover from!"
He had thought of her so much, by day and night, that he entertained a strange sense of familiarity, as if he had known and loved her all through life. So vivid were his impressions that he could not forget little inflections of her musical voice, tiny feminine gestures, stray sparkles of her eyes, the very echoes of her modulated laughter. All the weeks of his search, forever arousing in him by disappointment an increased determination, were but additions to their acquaintanceship. All the smothered, dormant sentiment accumulated throughout his life had been exploded, as by a spark, to burst into a brilliancy that filled his entire horizon. Life was filled with dazzling and unexpected stars of shining gold. There was but one moon in all his heavens, a warm, friendly, almost mystic moon that rendered gentle and fine everything upon which it bestowed benignancy. His universe could scarcely note the extinguishment of a sun. He had never paused to analyze it, but had fallen upon the truth that the love of a man of thirty-four makes or breaks far more irrevocably than does the evanescent love of a boy. The latter patient recovers amazingly. The former seeks a hospital alone, and the soul of him dies!
Jimmy found less difficulty in telegraphing an extravagant order for violets to be sent to "Miss Nellie Sturgis, care Martha Putnam Hotel, New York," than he did in the composition of a suitable letter of apology.
"I've never been so darned particular about what kind of stationery I used before," he thought, as he stared at the display in a shop and cogitated over what was the best. "In fact, come to think of it, hotels have paid for all I've ever used, and most times I didn't care much whether it came in reams or in rolls. Just so it would show where the lead pencil had traveled across. About all I ever thought of a letter was that one begins writing in the upper right hand corner, writes straight across, then goes back to the left hand again and does it over until the page is full, then turns it over and does some more, and at last thinks whether he ought to sign 'Yours truly,' 'Yours sincerely,' 'Your friend,' or 'Your old pal.'"
He wished now that he had time to secure something in blue with his monogram embossed either in the corner or the center, and with some special envelopes to match. Ordinary paper, purchasable from a regular shop, didn't seem good enough to be handled by those slender white fingers he had longed to kiss. There was nothing good enough for them, and anything less than the unattainable good enough might soil them.
"Dear me! What a particular, hard-to-please old crank!" said the young thing who served him after he, the traveling ray of sunshine, had departed with the most exclusive box of paper in the shop under his arm.
The fortunate, but to Jimmy Gollop unappreciated, fact is that this world is at the present moment filled with men who have tried to write just such letters, and that probably it always has been so since the first cave man tried to write an excuse to the first cave girl on a block or stone. Probably that cave man, too, lied with laborious misgivings. Probably he pleaded everything from urgent business to a broken head, or explained that the posts were delayed because for thirty-four days a dinosaurus had been blocking the traffic. And probably, just as now, the cave girl knew he lied, pouted, sulked, and then forgave him. Perhaps in those vigorous days she swore. Perhaps some of them do now. There are things of which, alas! one can never be certain.
At 6:32 o'clock, p.m., after fortifying himself with dinner, James Gollop retired to the writing room of the hotel and began. At 7:35 o'clock James Gollop thought he could write better in the privacy of his room where there were no distractions intervened by a lot of fools who should have been born dumb, but were unfortunately gifted with speech that was devoted to subjects that were of no importance at all in comparison with the epistolatory efforts of one James Gollop. By midnight the persistent correspondent had used a box of stationery, and had composed letters enough to have formed a book in the style of the "Ready Letter Writers' Friend," containing everything from letters of condolence to congratulation, and from stern business to effusive sentiment The sole letter missing might have been one pertaining to the birth of twins. And this was what he mailed:
"Dear Miss Sturgis: I have atoned for my seeming negligence by having some violets sent you to-day, fortunately remembering that those were the flowers for which you expressed a preference on that memorable occasion when we together visited the horse show. I am hoping to be in New York by Thursday next when I trust I shall have the great pleasure of seeing you at your hotel. Please transmit my cordial good wishes to your mother, and believe me,
"Most sincerely your friend,