Pearlie made an excellent listener. He was so boyish and so much
in love and so pathetically eager to make good with the firm, and
so happy to have someone in whom to confide.
"But it's a dog's life, after all," reflected Sam, again after
the fashion of all traveling men. "Any fellow on the road earns
his salary these days, you bet. I used to think it was all
getting up when you felt like it, and sitting in the big front
window of the hotel, smoking a cigar and watching the pretty
girls go by. I wasn't wise to the packing, and the unpacking, and
the rotten train service, and the grouchy customers, and the
canceled bills, and the grub."
Pearlie nodded understandingly. "A man told me once that twice a
week regularly he dreamed of the way his wife cooked
noodle-soup."
"My folks are German," explained Sam. "And my mother--can she
cook! Well, I just don't seem able to get her potato pancakes out
of my mind. And her roast beef tasted and looked like roast beef,
and not like a wet red flannel rag."
At this moment Pearlie was seized with a brilliant idea.
"To-morrow's Sunday. You're going to Sunday here, aren't you?
Come over and eat your dinner with us.
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