win the liking and confidence of any ordinary
man of business in ten minutes. It happened, fortunately, that the firm
of Quodling needed just such a representative. As Gammon knew, they had
been unlucky in their town traveller of late, and they looked just now
more to the "address," the personal qualities, of an applicant for the
position, than to his actual acquaintance with their business, which
was greatly a matter of routine. Mr. Gammon was accepted on trial, and
in a day or two began his urban travels.

Particular about the horses he drove, Gammon saw with pleasure the
young dark-bay cob, stylishly harnessed, which pawed delicately as he
mounted the neat little trap put at his disposal. It is the blessedness
of a mind and temper such as his that the things which charm at the
beginning of life continue to give pleasure, scarce abated, as long as
the natural force remains. At forty years of age Gammon set off about
his business with all the zest of a healthy boy. The knowledge he had
gained, all practical, and, so to speak, for external application,
could never become the burden of the philosopher; if he had any wisdom
at all it consisted in the lack of self-consciousness, the animal
acceptance of whatever good the hour might bring. He and his bay cob
were very much on the same footing; granted but a method of
communication and they would have understood each other. Even so with
his "bow-wows," as he called them. He rose superior to horse and dog
mainly in that one matter of desire for a certain kind of female
companionship; and this strain of idealism, naturally enough, was the
cause of almost the only discontent he ever knew.

Joyously he rattled about the highways and by-ways of greater London.
The position he had now obtained was to become a "permanency"; to
Quodling & Son he could attach himself, making his services
indispensable. One of these days--not just yet--he would look in at
Mrs. Clover's and see whether she still kept in the same resentful mind
towards him. It was an odd thing that nowadays he gave more thought to
Mrs. Clover than to Minnie. The young girl glimmered very far away, at
a height above him; he had made a mistake and frankly recognized it.
But Mrs. Clover, his excellent friend of many years, shone with no such
superiority, and was not above rebuke for any injustice she might do
him. Probably by this time she had forgotten her fretfulness, a result
of overstrung nerves. She would ask his par