She made friends by the hundreds, and friends are a business
asset. Those blithe, dressy, and smooth-spoken gentlemen
known as traveling men used to tell her their troubles,
perched on a stool near the stove, and show her the picture
of their girl in the back of their watch, and asked her to
dinner at the Haley House. She listened to their tale of
woe, and advised them; she admired the picture of the girl,
and gave some wholesome counsel on the subject of traveling
men's lonely wives; but she never went to dinner at the
Haley House.
It had not taken these debonair young men long to learn that
there was a woman buyer who bought quickly, decisively, and
intelligently, and that she always demanded a duplicate
slip. Even the most unscrupulous could not stuff an order
of hers, and when it came to dating she gave no quarter.
Though they wore clothes that were two leaps ahead of the
styles worn by the Winnebago young men--their straw
sailors were likely to be saw-edged when the local edges
were smooth, and their coats were more flaring, or their
trousers wider than the coats and trousers of the Winnebago
boys--they were not, for the most part, the gay dogs that
Winnebago's fancy painted them.
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