The rough draft of the contract having been drawn up to his
satisfaction, Bob sallied forth in search of a public stenographer. He
knew that he had evolved rather a clever scheme, and he was averse to
permitting the details of his plan to fall under the comprehending eye
of some boss printer, whose enterprise might perchance soar beyond
the boundaries of his vocation. So Bob sought, instead, a public
stenographer and had his copy multigraphed by a young lady whose
interest could never, by any possibility, center in anything more than
her fee.
The job was delivered two days later, and with the knowledge that he had
thirty days in which to make the acquaintance of his fifty prospective
clients, Bob resolved to devote one more week to the problem of still
further recruiting his shattered vitality before getting down to active
work.
He spent that week wandering through Golden Gate Park, along
the romantic and picturesque San Francisco water-front, and in
moving-picture shows. Each morning, before starting for the day's
wanderings, he wrote a long letter to Donna and then waited for the
first mail delivery for her letter to him. Those letters came with
unfailing regularity, and in that city where Bob McGraw prowled through
the day, unknown and unnoticed, there was no man so free from the
curse of loneliness as he. The very opening line in Donna's matutinal
greeting--“My Dear Sweetheart”--routed the blue devils that camped
nightly on his worried and harassed soul, as he lay abed and wrestled
with the mighty problems that confronted him. To Bob McGraw those three
words held the open-sesame of life; they gave him strength to cling to
his high, resolve; they whispered to him of the prize of the conflict
which awaited him at the end of his long road to Donnaville, and sent
him forth to face the world with a smile on his dauntless face and a
lilt in his great kind heart.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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