Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; College graduates -- Fiction; Gangsters -- Fiction
"Nothing stirring," said Jimmy. "I wouldn't sell another sock if you
paid me ten thousand dollars a year. I am through."
"Oh, very well," said the buyer aggrievedly, "but if you leave me this
way you will be unable to refer to the house."
But nothing, not even a team of oxen, could have held Jimmy in that
section another minute, and so he got his pay and left with nothing more
in view than a slow death by starvation.
"There," exclaimed Elizabeth Compton, as she sank back on the cushions
of her car.
"There what?" asked Harriet.
"I have placed him."
"Whom?"
"That nice-looking young person who waited on us in the hosiery
section."
"Oh!" said Harriet. "He was nice-looking, wasn't he? But he looked out
of place there, and I think he felt out of place. Did you notice how he
flushed when he asked you what size?" and the girls laughed heartily at
the recollection. "But where have you ever met him before?" Harriet
asked.
"I have never met him," corrected Elizabeth, accenting the "met." "He
changed a wheel on the roadster several weeks ago one evening after I
had taken Harold down to the club. And he was very nice about it. I
should say that he is a gentleman, although his clothes were pretty
badly worn."
"Yes," said Harriet, "his suit was shabby, but his linen was clean and
his coat well brushed."
"My!" exclaimed Elizabeth. "He must have made an impression on some
one."
"Well," said Harriet, "it isn't often you see such a nice-looking chap
in the hosiery section."
"No," said Elizabeth, "and probably if he were as nice as he looks he
wouldn't be there."
Whereupon the subject was changed, and she promptly forgot Mr. Jimmy
Torrance. But Jimmy was not destined soon to forget her, for as the
jobless days passed and he realized more and more what an ass he had
made of himself, and why, he had occasion to think about her a great
deal, although never in any sense reproaching her. He realized that the
fault was his own and that he had done a foolish thing in giving up his
position because of a girl he did not know and probably never would.
There came a Saturday when Jimmy, jobless and fundless, dreaded his
return to the Indiana Avenue rooming-house, where he knew the landlady
would be eagerly awaiting him, for he was a week in arrears in his room
rent already, and had been warned he could expect no further credit.
"There is a nice young man wanting your room," the landlady had told
him, "and I shall have to be having it Saturday night unless you can pay
up."
Jimmy stood on the corner of Clark and Van Buren looking at his watch.
"I hate to do it," he thought, "but the Lizard said he could get twenty
for it, and twenty would give me another two weeks." And so his watch
went, and two weeks later his cigarette-case and ring followed. Jimmy
had never gone in much for jewelry--a fact which he now greatly
lamented.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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