"At the City Hotel," said Jimmy. "Good sample rooms there. Good grub. Good beds."
"I think I'll go there, too," said Martin, and together they entered the hotel bus and were driven away.
As usual Jimmy was welcomed by his first name, and informed that there was some mail there for him. When he looked around from its perusal Martin had disappeared and he did not meet him again until he was seated in a corner of the restaurant alone, when a voice behind him said, "Hope you don't mind if I join you, Mr. Gollop," and looked up to see his traveling companion.
"Not at all, Mr. Martin," he replied. "Always glad to have good company. I'm a sociable sort of cuss myself. I detest traveling alone, eating alone, or loafing alone. I suppose I'm gregarious."
A troubled, thoughtful shadow chased itself over the elder man's face, as he said, with a half-sigh, "I understand. It's not good for a man to be alone. And the older he becomes, the more he feels lonesomeness, and the more he wants—home!"
The word was the magic one for Jimmy. Somehow that word always moved him and brought out his great undercurrent.
"Why, do you know," he said, leaning across the table with shining eyes, "if I didn't have a home to go to, always, after I've made my round, I'd be like a horse that had been robbed of his stall? I live for it! I work for it! I look forward to it all the time! But you see, I'm different than most men. Luckier, I think, because my mother's there! And if I didn't have a thing in the world but her, I'd be rich. And if I had everything else but her, I'd be poor! I'm mighty proud of my home and my mother. I shall be leaving here for home to-morrow afternoon," continued Jimmy. "After I've hustled around and seen about a dozen customers. Being a drummer and having a craze for home, are two pretty tough propositions to combine. But—what would home be without chocolates? Why, do you know, I don't think I'd have been able to have a home at all without 'em! By chocolates Maw and I live or die. Funny, isn't it, that if there was an earthquake that wiped a spot off the maps and hurt me when I read about it, I'd keep going on just about the same; but if everybody stopped eating chocolates, I'd be wiped off the map, and I reckon the world would be going on just the same? Sometimes I think every man's world is the smallest thing there is because it's bounded only by his own happiness or tragedy. He's just one of billions, but if his pet dog dies, he's astonished because the universe isn't covered with gloom and probably he's the only one that's sorry about the dog, or that even knows the dog has croaked. Maybe somebody else hears about it and is glad—the chap that the dog bit the week before he went to dog-heaven. But—anyhow—I'm bound for home to-morrow. Back to Baltimore, as the song goes."
"Baltimore?" said Martin. "That's a coincidence! I go to Baltimore myself to-morrow. Struthers people. Know them? Make tools of precision."
"Everybody in Baltimore knows of them," declared Jim with full civic pride.
"I shall take the two-thirty train," said Martin. "Maybe we shall travel together."