Mixed Faces. Norton Roy
it? I came a long way to get acquainted with you and I like most people. It's not my fault that you look so much like me, is it?"
"Look like you? It's your fault that you look like me!" snapped the Judge as if that fault were an impertinence.
"Phew!" said Jimmy, puffing out his cheeks. "That's the sort you are, eh? Guess I made a mistake."
"I guess you did," grimly said the Judge, mimicking Jimmy's voice without in the least realizing it. And then he added, "Good day, Mr. Gollop. I hope I may not see you again and that you travel in some other territory than this."
As if incredulous, Jimmy stared at him for a full quarter minute and then, recovering his good humor, clapped his hat on his head and assuming a highly melodramatic air in imitation of the Judge's ponderous methods said, "Harold, beware! Beware! I say! It's a long worm that has no turning. Them papers shall be mine! I swear it on me lyfe." And with a boisterous shout of laughter turned out through the door and down the stairs. That ribald laughter still floated upward as he made his departure, and the Judge was annoyed. Very much annoyed. He felt himself soiled; quite as if the garbage van man had suddenly tried to kiss him with brotherly affection. It was outrageous! Impossible! And a mere drummer, too!
Jimmy retired to an hotel, pausing on the way to buy a pair of blue goggles, and to fit them on, and to pull his hat down over his eyes.
"I don't intend to look like that old catamount in his own town anyhow," he said to himself. "If he's as popular with his fellow citizens as he is with me it might not be safe. Wish I had a set of false whiskers to wear during my sojourn. Wonder when the next train leaves? I'm like the chap that got pinned down under a burning railway wreck and said he thought he really ought to get away from there. That's me! I want to get away from here."
In the hotel room he dug his pocket time table from his grip, and no hungry reader ever plunged into the pages of the latest "Best Seller" more avidly than did he thumb those flimsy pages. His capable fingers turned the leaves rapidly and, being expert and highly trained in working out the abstruse puzzles and problems with which time table people always try to fill their books so that people will get tired of seeking information and look at the advertisements, in less than five minutes he slammed the book shut and almost viciously hurled it back into his bag.
"By Heck!" he muttered, despairingly, "no train out till four o'clock to-morrow morning and—I'll bet it smells of new laid milk and long laid cows. There'll be an hour's delay while they fill the baggage car with chickens in coops. Serves the chickens right for getting up that early. Ought to go some place and have their heads chopped off. There'll be one combination smoker car filled with yawning farm hands who wear fertilizer on their boots. But it's me for that train!"
Then, recovering his cheerfulness, he sallied out to visit all the confectionary shops; but met with no success and attributed his failure to the hideous goggles and the fact that his customary happy and seductive grin was slightly stiff about the corners as if his face needed oiling. "Hang it all! Nobody but an undertaker could look happy in this town," Jimmy thought after his final effort. "No wonder that old cuss is so solemn. I'd be too, if I lived in a morgue!"
To escape the town he decided to make a pedestrian trip to where the only big enterprise near Princetown was in full blast. It was spoken of as "out at the falls" as if they were the only ones on earth. It was two and a half miles from the town and the day was hot. "Thank Heaven it might be worse," thought Jimmy. "I might have to tote a hundred pound grip this far in the hope of getting an order, and now all I've got to lug is my goggles." He took them off, wiped the sweat from his face, stopped to watch some fish in a stream, regretted that he hadn't brought some string and a fish hook, contemplated a swim, and then trudged onward, whistling as he went and wholly forgetful of his woes. He came in sight of "The Falls," and stopped.
"Whew!" he puffed. "Of course they're not as big as Niagara—except to the folks of Princetown; but by Heck! They're some falls after all. And, what's more, some live individual knows it. Bet he wasn't born in Princetown anyhow. This looks like business."
He leaned on the railing of a bridge and speculatively regarded the considerable manufacturing plant that was in full industry, saw that its prosperity was evidenced by some big new buildings under course of construction, and deliberated over a long white sign on top that read "Sayers Automobiles."
He rather objected to that sign. If he had designed it it would have been twice as high, twice as long and might have read "Sayers Automobiles, best on earth for the money. Cheapest at any price. No home complete without one."
He remembered that he had ridden in one a few days before and that it was what he called "nifty and nippy." In fact he had thought he would like to have one—just a very small one to suit his purse, and had intended to ask what they cost. All his automobiling experience had been at the expense of his firm; but he had done quite a lot of riding. In fact the cashier had once asked him, sarcastically, whilst checking up his expense account, if he took an automobile to bed with him.
Jimmy got out his goggles, and visited the works. He was fascinated by the machinery, the noise, the way things were made. He wished that his line was automobiles instead of chocolates; but regretfully concluded that probably it took a long time to learn the patter, and how to run one, and that the only hopeless individual in the world was a candy drummer, because, "once a candy drummer always a candy drummer" was the proverb of the road.
A whistle blew and with a start he looked at his watch, scarcely believing it possible that he had passed the afternoon so quickly. He walked out through the big gates and started his homeward journey, and was surprised to realize that he was as tired as if he had done a heavy day's work. Absorbed in reflections concerning automobiles, and trade, he suddenly brought up with a jerk and heard behind him a man jamming on the brakes of a car, and using several shining expletives. Jimmy made the jump of his life and got out of the road just in time.
"Gee Whizz!" he exclaimed. "If I've got to be run down by a taxi let it be on Broadway, not on a rube trail. Thank the Lord it wasn't a hay cart, because it'd have got me, sure!"
The motorist, looking back in exasperation, abruptly brought his car to a halt and turning half round in his seat shouted, "Sorry I missed you so close."
"Why, did you want to get me? It was close enough to suit me," replied Jimmy, recovering his grin.
"Of course I didn't know you were blind, sir. I'm very sorry," said the man.
"Why? Do you prefer to run down the blind ones?" queried Jimmy, coming abreast of the car and then laughing when he remembered that he was still wearing those ridiculous blue goggles. "I'm not blind. I just wear these for ornament. But it's all right, old chap. Don't you worry. I reckon I was so busy thinking that I didn't hear you coming at all. I get rather fond of myself when I think, which isn't often enough so but that it surprises me to catch myself doing it. It's all right. No harm done."
The man surrendered to that entrancing smile and the glitter of exposed and perfect white teeth.
"Well the least I can do is to give you a lift, if you're going toward town," he said, with a return grin. "Get in, can't you?"
"Can't I? Watch me, as the drunk said when the policeman tapped him and told him he couldn't sleep sitting against a lamp post," and, grateful for conveyance, he climbed aboard. "It's the first time I ever won anything by missing anything," he said, laughing at his own paradox. "My feet are so sore from walking over these country roads that after this I'll never be able to look at a farm horse without tears in my eyes, and I'll take him by the hand and give the poor chap a box of corn salve. Phew! Pavements for mine. Do automobiles ever get sore feet out here?"
Jimmy learned that the driver was a foreman at the Sayers plant and was very enthusiastic about the merits of the car.
"It's not old enough or advertised enough to be well known yet," he said, "but she will be. I know. Been in automobile factories all my life. Worked for some of the best of 'em. These are A-1. And Sayers is a live one. Fine old feller, too. That's his house up there on the hill. Some swell, eh?"
Jimmy looked up and saw a fine home that he had admired on