E. B. L.

Cupid's Middleman

CHAPTER I

"Jim, it's years since you asked me to help you out in a love affair," I
said. "Has your old heart grown cold, shriveled up, or what's the
matter?"

"You're right, Ben; it must be a long time back. But why don't you put
out a few letters for yourself?"

"I wish I could get a dollar a ton for all I have written for you," said
I; "then I'd have a fortune and all the girls would be chasing me for my
money."

"Say, was it as bad as that, do you think?"

"Well, cut the price in two and I'd be satisfied."

"What a fool I was, Ben, to let you trifle with my fair friends in that
way! You came near putting me in a terrible hole several times."

"Is that so? You never said anything about it. Tell me now."

"Not for a mansion and forty servants would I tell you. Well, I should
say not. Nay! Nay!"

"I'll bet you profited by my efforts and you're not willing to let on.
Do you think that is a friendly attitude to take toward an agent who has
increased the range of your powers of fascination?"

"You came near increasing the length of my neck by several inches. Why,
the fathers and big brothers of some of those girls you wrote to came
near lynching me."

"Well, I wasn't to blame for that, was I?"

"You certainly were. You laid it on too thick."

"Not too thick to please the girls, did I?"

"Suited some of the girls first rate, but it's bad to write so much.
It's apt to come back at you when you least expect it."

"What do you care so long as the girls were pleased? You were not
courting the father. If you had intended to have the old gentleman read
them I could easily have changed the style from a Grade A love to a nice
assortment of short business phrases. But, say, Jim, you ought to tell
me what happened. Come, now! Any bull's-eyes?"

"Do you know that you wrote enough letters to my girls to have married
me off a dozen times or more? There are some streets I dare not pass
through now--there's that foolish creature in West Thirty-eighth Street,
for example."

I knew that Jim would leak a little if persistently tapped with
interrogations.

"What about her? Did we send her many or was she easily won?" I asked.
"Hard or soft?" As the middleman it was purely business with me.

"That girl was a queer case," said Jim, and he reflected for a moment.
"Why, do you know, you had her running to clairvoyants for advice. She
did