At an early hour on the following forenoon Jimmy stood outside a shop in the fashionable quarter of Easton and read the neat sign:
The Elite Confectionery will occupy these premises Dec. 10th. Fittings and decorations being done by Merthyn Cabinet Co.
Eagerly he advanced to the open door through which the sounds of industrious hammering and sawing issued, and paused for a moment to admire the growing interior.
"She's going to have a nice place, all right," he thought. "It's harmonious and strictly first class. That's the way to do it."
He spoke to a man who was polishing some newly laid tile, who replied, "Mrs. Sturgis? I think she's in her office. It's straight back through the door. She was there a minute ago, with her daughter."
Not Mercury of the winged heels advanced more swiftly than did Jimmy Gollop, nor was Mercury's heart ever fluttering so gladly. In a disorderly little office, plainly make-shift for the time being, sat the proprietress whom he instantly recognized as "Mrs. Sturgis, formerly of Lansing," and at a littered table beside her, checking up a collection of bills, sat a redheaded girl wearing glasses and whose honest face was illuminated by a friendly grin showing fine teeth, but who Jimmy remembered as one always to be seen behind the counter in Lansing.
"I hope you remember me too, Mr. Gollop," she said, after he had automatically shaken hands with her mother. "I'm Nellie Sturgis. The one you used to call 'Sturgis Number Two,'" and the friendly simper she gave him was about as welcome as a punctured tire in a road race.
CHAPTER V
Had Jim Gollop kept a diary, the entries for certain dates might have ran thus: "Friday: Stood all day in front of Martha Putnam Hotel, waiting for Candy Girl to come in or out. Very observant small boys in neighborhood, and policeman who begins to suspect. No luck.