s is mighty good of you," said Bruce, as grateful as though he had
written special letters of endorsement for him to all his friends.
"Say," with his impulsive hospitality, "I wish you could come out and
visit me. Couldn't you get away the end of August when the bull-trout
and the redsides are biting good?"

"Me?" The clerk started, then he murmured wistfully: "When the
bull-trout and the redsides are biting good! Gee! I like the way that
sounds! Then," with a resigned gesture, "I was never farther west than
South Bethlehem; I never expect to have the price."

He looked so efficient and well dressed that Bruce had thought he must
receive a large salary and he felt badly to learn that the prosperity of
such a nice chap was only clothes deep. He promised to look in on him
before he left the city and tell him how he had gotten on; then he took
his list and went back to the hotel prepared to spend some anxious hours
in the time which must intervene before he could expect to hear from his
night telegram. He hoped the answer would come in the morning, for
disappointments, he had learned, were easier to bear when the sun shone.

The telegram was awaiting him when he returned from an excursion to a
department store which had been fraught with considerable excitement. A
majestic blonde had assumed a kind of protectorate over him and
dissuaded him from his original intention of buying thirty yards of
ruching for Ma Snow with a firmness that approached a refusal to sell
him anything so old-fashioned, although he protested that it had looked
beautiful in the neck and sleeves of his mother's gowns some fifteen
years before. Neglecting to explain that his gift was for a woman all of
fifty, a pink crepe-de-chine garment was held alluringly before his
embarrassed eyes and a filmy petticoat, from beneath which, in his
mind's eye, Bruce could see Pa Snow's carpet-slippers, in which Ma Snow
"eased her feet," peeping in and out. In the end he fought his way
out--through more women than he had seen together in all his life--with
a box of silk hose in appallingly vivid colors and a beaded bag which,
he had it on the saleslady's honor, was "all the rage."

Bruce took the yellow envelope which the desk-clerk handed him and
looked at it with a feeling of dread. He had counted the hours until it
should come and now he was afraid to open it. It meant so much to
him--everything in fact--the moment was a crisis but he managed to tear
the envelop