ubbs shakes his head and starts pacin' up and down in front of the
window. He hadn't done more'n three laps, though, before in blows a
messenger boy and hands him a telegram.

"We-e-e-yow!" yells Hubbs. "Hey, Shorty, it's come--doggoned if it ain't
come! Look at that!"

It was a brief bulletin, but full of meat. It runs like this:

Good work, Nelson. You've done it. Gopher's on the map.

And the last we saw of him, after he'd turned the stock business over to
Mendell & Co., he was pikin' for a west-bound train with his grip in one
fist and that old accordion in the other.

J. Bayard smiles after him friendly and indulgent. "A woman in the case,
I suppose?" says he.

"Uh-huh," says I. "The plumpest, cheeriest, winnin'est little body ever
left unclaimed,--his description. She's the lady Mayor out there. And if
I'm any judge, with them two holdin' it down, Gopher's on the map to
stay."

CHAPTER IX

WHAT LINDY HAD UP HER SLEEVE

"But think of it, Shorty!" says Sadie. "What an existence!"

"There's plenty worse off than her," says I; "so what's the use?"

"I can't help it," says she. "Twenty years! No holidays, no home, no
relatives: nothing but sew and mend, sew and mend--and for strangers, at
that! Talk about dull gray lives--ugh!"

"Well, she's satisfied, ain't she?" says I.

"That's the worst of it," says Sadie. "She seems to live for her work.
Goodness knows how early she's up and at it in the morning, and at night
I have to drive her out of the sewing room!"

"And you kick at that?" says I. "Huh! Why, on lower Fifth-ave. they
capitalize such habits and make 'em pay for fifteen-story buildin's.
Strikes me this Lindy of yours is perfectly good sweatshop material. You
don't know a good thing when you see it, Sadie."

"There, there, Shorty!" says she. "Don't try to be comic about it.
There's nothing in the least funny about Lindy."

She was dead right too; and all I meant by my feeble little cracks was
that a chronic case of acute industry was too rare a disease for me to
diagnose offhand. Honest, it almost gave me the fidgets, havin' Lindy
around the house. Say, she had the busy bee lookin' like a corner loafer
with his hands in his pockets!

About once a month we had Lindy with us, for three or four days at a
stretch, and durin' that time she'd be gallopin' through all kinds of
work, from darnin' my socks or rippin' up an old skirt, to embroiderin'
the fam'ly monogram on the comp'ny tabl