The Spoilers of the Valley Part 44

"Here, you piker! You wait a minute." Jim grabbed Phil's coat sleeve.

The young lady's cheeks began to take on the added attractiveness of a blush.

"You ain't ever met me before, I know," she said. "But don't you know me by my picture?"

Jim shook his head in perplexity.

"I'd a-knowed you any place."

For the first time in Phil's experience of Jim, the latter stood abashed.

"You might have come to meet me at the train though. Guess you was just comin'. I wrote you three days since."

"You did, eh! Well,--I never got your letter," bantered Jim, recovering his composure.

She was a pretty piece of femininity, despite her poor language and her somewhat tawdry finery.

"I think you're stringing me. But say!--I'm awful hungry, and I've been two days in the train.

"Ain't you goin' to get me some eats, Sol?"

"Sol!" exclaimed Jim with a gulp that spoke intense relief. "Why, my good girl, my name's not Sol!"

"Oh, yes it is!" she answered bravely, with the smile fading. "I tell you I'd a-knowed you anywheres."

"You're making a mistake, dear la.s.sie. My name is certainly not Sol."

A glimmer of light was beginning to break in on Phil, but he kept that glimmer miserly to his inmost self.

"Yes it is! Oh, yes it is!" she said again, putting her hand on Jim's arm, but with a peculiar little expression of uncertainty in her eyes.

"You can't fool me, Sol Hanson,--and, say boy!--I've come a long ways for you, and I'm awful tired."

"Hanson! Good Lord!" blurted out Jim. "Me--Sol Hanson! La.s.sie, la.s.sie, I didna think I was so good looking. Are ye looking for Sol Hanson?"

The girl did not answer. A moisture began to gather in her big, blue eyes, and a tear toppled over.

Jim was all baby at once.

"Dinna greet!--there's a good la.s.s! Dinna greet here in the street,"

he coaxed. "If it is Sol Hanson ye want, we can soon help ye to get him."

The girl bent down and opened up one of her hand-bags, bringing out a large photograph, pasted on a creamy-coloured, gay-looking cardboard mount. She handed it to Jim, searching his face with her tear-dimmed eyes.

Jim gazed at it in bewilderment. Then he scratched his head and gazed again.

"Ain't that your picture?" the young lady asked. "Don't tell me that it ain't, for it wouldn't be true; and I came all this way because you wrote so nice and looked so big and good. I--I didn't think you was a bluffer like--like other men."

Her breath caught and she began to sob.

"My dear la.s.sie,--I am bewildered,--confounded. I--I----That is my photo, but where in all the world did ye get it from?"

The girl looked at him a little angrily, for she had pluck in plenty.

"Where do you think? I ain't stole it. You sent it to me. Where else could I get it?"

Jim stood foolishly.

"I certainly never sent it. Why, woman!--I never saw ye before. I don't know your name even. I--I----

"There, there! Dinna start to greet again. We'll fix you up, if you'll only tell Phil and me your trouble."

"--And your name ain't Sol Hanson?" she queried, with a trembling lip.

"No!--I am sorry to say it is not!"

From her grip, the girl picked out a bundle of envelopes, well filled, and done up in lavender-coloured ribbon.

"--And--and you never wrote them letters to me?"

Jim looked at the writing and shook his head.

"No,--I never did!"

"--And--and you don't know my name's Betty Jornsen?"

"I didn't, but I do now, Betty," gallantly answered Jim, while Phil was beside himself trying to stifle his amus.e.m.e.nt one moment, and endeavouring to keep back his feelings of sympathy for the girl, the next.

Several pa.s.sers-by turned round and stared in open interest at the strange meeting.

"Shut up your bag, la.s.sie! Don't show us any more o' your gear,"

appealed Jim in perturbation at the thought of what might come out next.

The buxom, fair-haired woman began to sob again. She turned and appealed to Phil.

"Oh, what am I to do, mister? I had a good job at Nixon's Cafe in Seattle. Sol wrote to me through the _Matrimonial Times_. I wrote back to him. I sent him my picture and he sent me his--this one--and now he says he ain't him."

"That isn't his photo, woman,--it is mine," interrupted Jim.

"But he's you," she whimpered.

"Then who the mischief am I?" asked Jim in perplexity.

"You told me you had a house, and fruit trees, and a blacksmith's shop, and plenty of money and, if I came to Canada, we'd get married.

I throwed up my good job and I've come and now you say you ain't him,"

she sailed on breathlessly, her ample bosom labouring excitedly.

"Phil," said Jim, aside. "How the devil do you suppose that big idiot got my photo? It looks like one taken off one I used to have, and lost."