r. They gazed at
each other a moment, in astonishment, when another girl, perhaps a little
better looking, further on, said, "Here, Cash, quick!" He at once made up
his mind that she was the one that had spoken to him the first time, so he
said, "Beg your pardon, miss," to the black-eyed girl, and went on to
where the other girl was wrapping up a corset in a base ball undershirt.
As he approached her she smiled, supposing he wanted to buy something. He
thought she knew him, and he sat down on a stool and put out his hand and
said, "How have you been?" She didn't seem to shake very much, but asked
him if there was anything she could show him. He thought may be it was
against the rules for the clerks to speak to anybody, unless they were
buying something, so he said, "Yes, of course. Show me corsets, stockings,
anything, gaul dumbed if I care what." She was just beginning to look upon
him as though she thought he had escaped, when a little blonde on the
other side of the store, as sweet as honey, shouted, "Cash, Cash, I need
thee every hour. Come a running." To say that Cash was astonished, is
drawing it mild. He knew that they all wanted him, but he couldn't make
out how they seemed to know his name. He looked at the little blonde a
minute, trying to think where he had met her, when he decided to go over
and ask her. On the way over he thought she resembled a girl that used to
live in Portage. He went up to her, and with a smile that was childlike
and bland, he said, "Why, how are you, Samantha?" The little blonde looked
daggers at him. "Didn't you use to wait on tables there at the Fox House,
at Portage?" The girl picked up a roll of paper cambric, and was about to
brain him, when the floor walker came along, and asked what was the
matter. Cash explained that since he came into the store, three or four
girls had yelled to him, and he couldn't place them. "There," says he, as
another girl yelled "Cash," "there's another of 'em wants me," and he was
going to where she was, when the floor walker asked him if his name was
Cash. "You bet your liver it is," said Cash. It was then explained to him
that the girls were calling cash boys. He thought it over a minute and
said, "Sold, by the great baldheaded Elijah. Won't you go down and take
something? Invite all of them. The girls can take soda. I'll be gaul
blasted if I ever had such a rig played on me." And he went out into the
glare of the sunlight, with his hat pulled down over