Cupid's Middleman

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

"Jim, it's years since you asked me to help you out in a love affair," I said. "Has your old heart grown cold, shriveled up, or what's the matter?"

"You're right, Ben; it must be a long time back. But why don't you put out a few letters for yourself?"

"I wish I could get a dollar a ton for all I have written for you," said I; "then I'd have a fortune and all the girls would be chasing me for my money."

"Say, was it as bad as that, do you think?"

"Well, cut the price in two and I'd be satisfied."

"What a fool I was, Ben, to let you trifle with my fair friends in that way! You came near putting me in a terrible hole several times."

"Is that so? You never said anything about it. Tell me now."

"Not for a mansion and forty servants would I tell you. Well, I should say not. Nay! Nay!"

"I'll bet you profited by my efforts and you're not willing to let on. Do you think that is a friendly attitude to take toward an agent who has increased the range of your powers of fascination?"

"You came near increasing the length of my neck by several inches. Why, the fathers and big brothers of some of those girls you wrote to came near lynching me."

"Well, I wasn't to blame for that, was I?"

"You certainly were. You laid it on too thick."

"Not too thick to please the girls, did I?"

"Suited some of the girls first rate, but it's bad to write so much. It's apt to come back at you when you least expect it."

"What do you care so long as the girls were pleased? You were not courting the father. If you had intended to have the old gentleman read them I could easily have changed the style from a Grade A love to a nice assortment of short business phrases. But, say, Jim, you ought to tell me what happened. Come, now! Any bull's-eyes?"

"Do you know that you wrote enough letters to my girls to have married me off a dozen times or more? There are some streets I dare not pass through now—there's that foolish creature in West Thirty-eighth Street, for example."

I knew that Jim would leak a little if persistently tapped with interrogations.

"What about her? Did we send her many or was she easily won?" I asked. "Hard or soft?" As the middleman it was purely business with me.

"That girl was a queer case," said Jim, and he reflected for a moment. "Why, do you know, you had her running to clairvoyants for advice. She didn't think anything of putting up five dollars to learn how it was going to turn out. As soon as I heard that I quit calling and shut you off, for it was either that or get shot, I believed."

"That's quite a case, Jim. Let me into all of that, won't you?"

"I'm not going to tell you. It's past now, so let it go. You got me into enough trouble to fill a book. The book won't be written, though, for the inside story dies with me."

"Come, come, Jim; it's not fair to shut me out from all the excitement and fun after I did all the drudgery. Think how I used to struggle here to keep up my end."

"You struggle! Where do you suppose I came in? Still, I'll say no more about it, for I see you are trying to pump me....