“Miss Golden!” a thick voice hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Say, I thought it was you. Well, well, the world’s pretty small, after all. Say, I bet you don’t remember me.”
In the porch light Una beheld a heavy-shouldered, typical American business man, in derby hat and clipped mustache, his jowls shining with a recent shave; an alert, solid man of about forty-five. She remembered him as a man she had been glad to meet; she felt guiltily that she ought to know him—perhaps he was a Wilkins client, and she was making future difficulty in the office. But place him she could not.
“Oh yes, yes, of course, though I can’t just remember your name. I always can remember faces, but I never can remember names,” she achieved.
“Sure, I know how it is. I’ve often said, I never forget a face, but I never can remember names. Well, sir, you remember Sanford Hunt that went to the commercial college—”
“Oh, now I know—you’re Mr. Schwirtz of the Lowry Paint Company, who had lunch with us and told me about the paint company—Mr. Julius Schwirtz.”
“You got me.... Though the fellows usually call me ‘Eddie’—Julius Edward Schwirtz is my full name—my father was named Julius, and my mother’s oldest brother was named Edward—my old dad used to say it wasn’t respectful to him because I always preferred ‘Eddie’—old codger used to get quite het up about it. Julius sounds like you was an old Roman or something, and in the business you got to have a good easy name. Say, speaking of that, I ain’t with Lowry any more; I’m chief salesman for the Ætna Automobile Varnish and Wax Company. I certainly got a swell territory—New York, Philly, Bean-Town, Washi’nun, Balt’more, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron, and so on, and of course most especially Detroit. Sell right direct to the jobbers and the big auto companies. Good bunch of live wires. Some class! I’m rolling in my little old four thousand bucks a year now, where before I didn’t hardly make more’n twenty-six or twenty-eight hundred. Keeps me on the jump alrightee. Fact. I got so tired and run-down— I hadn’t planned to take any vacation at all, but the boss himself says to me, ‘Eddie, we can’t afford to let you get sick; you’re the best man we’ve got,’ he says, ’and you got to take a good vacation now and forget all about business for a couple weeks.’ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘I was just wondering if you was smart enough to get along without me if I was to sneak out and rubber at some scenery and maybe get up a flirtation with a pretty summer girl’—and I guess that must be you, Miss Golden!—and he laughs and says, ‘Oh yes, I guess the business wouldn’t go bust for a few days,’ and so I goes down and gets a shave and a hair-cut and a singe and a shampoo—there ain’t as much to cut as there used to be, though—ha, ha!—and here I am.”
“Yes!” said Una affably....
Miss Una Golden, of Panama and the office, did not in the least feel superior to Mr. Eddie Schwirtz’s robust commonness. The men she knew, except for pariahs like Walter Babson, talked thus. She could admire Mamie Magen’s verbal symphonies, but with Mr. Schwirtz she was able to forget her little private stock of worries and settle down to her holiday.