g, and
there is no such animal as a successful drummer with a perpetual grouch.
But just the same the astute Jimmy's progress was not so easily
profitable from the personal point as he had conceived, and as he had
ardently hoped. He had left New York in his customary optimism with the
boastful prediction, "I'll learn the candy girl's name, and where she
lives when she's at home, and when her birthday is, and all about her,
before I get back. And on the day I get her name I'll telegraph an order
to a New York florist to take her the biggest bunch of violets she ever
saw."

At the end of the first week he felt that the next week must surely
bring the coveted information, and at the end of the second week he made
a bet with himself that he'd find it out in the third. Then when the
third week proved equally barren, he doubled the stakes and lost them on
the fourth week.

"Anyhow," he communed with himself, "I'm more than half way through, and
shall win on the next stretch."

But his hopes, increasing as his tour of elimination progressed, began
to turn to anxieties as his margin for developments narrowed until he
was almost feverishly eager in his pursuit when he entered his last and
final week. Everywhere he went there were the same old names and the
same old faces. One or two customers had sold out, but invariably they
were men. It was on his last day, when hope had waned, that he found
what he hoped was a clue. Mrs. Ellen Sturgis, of Lansing, Michigan, who,
according to his blue book, was "quite a lady, credit A1, tall, good
dresser, very quiet, somewhat standoffish, fond of horses, because, owns
her own trap outfit and nice little cob," had sold out and gone to parts
unknown.

"Didn't she leave any address?" inquired Jimmy of the new owner, who was
an affable, elderly gentleman given to loquacity.

"Not with me. Probably at the post office. Hope I can do as well with
this business as she did, and I think I can do better. But she made
money here, all right. Of course she had a society pull to start with
because you see she was the widow of a man who was thought to be pretty
well heeled until he died; then she had to go into business to support
herself, and all the best people in the town patronized her and--anyone
can do business with that kind of a pull."

Jimmy closed his order and loitered around the mirror-garnished shop
until he got an opportunity to talk with a girl whose face was
familiar.

"Let me see,"