most business men enjoy a joke, their sense of humor is so
deficient that they don't care to combine jest and business. His
ill-fame had preceded him, and in addition thereto, it was the
off-season, and vacancies few.

"We'd like to have you, Jim," said one sales manager, "but the trouble
is that we should want you to take up the territory where you are well
known, and that, of course, is impossible."

Others told him to call later in the season. Others who would have given
him samples were firms of such small caliber that he could not see any
future, and several were willing to take him on commission sales only.
The only thing that helped him was that prodigious store of optimism
which impelled him after each rebuff to hope for a change just around
the corner.

It was when he felt at rather low ebb that he passed, rather
disconsolately, the Flat Iron Building and remembered Martin. Having no
other place to go, he decided to call upon that shrewd gentleman and
gather from such a source of hard common sense fresh courage. He turned
in through the big swinging door that let a gust of winter into each
compartment as it whirled, trundled it around and belched it into the
great hallway, and somewhat absent-mindedly collided with a man who was
coming out.

"Hello! She bumps!" said Jimmy good-naturedly and then--"Why--why it's
you, is it, Mr. Martin? I was just coming up to your offices to see if
by chance you happened to be in."

There was no mistaking the heartiness of the hand grasp that caught his.

"Well, we can go up now," said Martin, cheerfully. "In fact, I've been
thinking about you quite a lot. Been rather eager to see you again.
But--hold on!--the office is anything but a confidential resort. Suppose
you come with me to the Engineers' Club where we can have a nice quiet
talk."

Jimmy, feeling as if he had at least one friend left in the world,
readily accepted, and thought it rather lucky that they were the only
men in the club lounge room; felt that the chairs were very
comfortable, and the atmosphere summery.

"How are things with you?" asked Martin shrewdly eyeing him through the
first blue smoke screen of a cigar.

"Oh, so-so," replied Jimmy, evasively.

"Everything all right?"

"In a way. In a way."

"Chocolate business flourishing?"

"It was--up to a week ago."

"But now? How about now, Gollop?"

For a moment Jim scarcely knew what to answer, and looking up from an
overly prolonged inspec