CHAPTER X
OUR HERO RENEWS HIS YOUTH IN THE WARMTH
OF AN OLD FRIENDSHIP
AS Mr. Waddy was glancing over his paper at breakfast next morning, he caught sight of a name once familiar.
“Perhaps I did wrong,” thought he, not for the first time, “to close all intercourse with people here when I went away. ‘Perkins & Tootler’ advertising everywhere. There can’t be two men named Tootler. It must be my old schoolfellow. I’ll go down and see if he remembers me.”
Large letters in the directory informed him of the firm’s address—Perkins & Tootler, wool merchants, Throgmorton Perkins, Thomas Tootler. Ira easily found the store. Everything looked busy and prosperous. The air around was filled with a fine flocculent haze which caused Mr. Waddy to rub his nose.
“Tommy doesn’t need to advertise that he’s in wool,” thought he. “In clover, too, I should think.”
All within the store of P. & T. was bustle. Wool-gathering there meant quite the opposite of witlessness. In reply to Mr. Waddy’s inquiry for Mr. Tootler, a busy clerk pointed to the inner office. The door was shut, and as Mr. Waddy knocked, he heard a queer, suppressed sound, half musical, half melancholy, like the wheeze of a country church organ when Bellows, immersed in his apple, has forgotten his duty of blast.
“Come in,” said a voice.
As Ira entered, the person within was engaged in hurrying something into the pocket of his grey morning coat. The person was a short, bald, jolly fatling, all abloom with pink freshness. He looked a compound of père de famille and jolly dog. His abiding rosiness was rosier now with a blush as of one detected; it grew ruddier as the stranger addressed him.
“Mr. Tootler, I believe?”
“Yes, sir; will you take a seat?” returned Tootler politely; then, as he saw his visitor in clearer light, he sprang to his feet, with hands outstretched. “Is it possible? Why, Waddy, is it you? Folly ol tolly ol tilly ol ta!” and he grasped Ira’s hands and hopped before him in a polka step. As he hopped, his coat flew about and a hard object in the pocket struck Mr. Waddy’s leg.