MR. GOLDBERG, the manager and proprietor of the Parade Drug Store, was a man who possessed neither a sense of imagination nor the spirit of romance. He sent peremptorily for Timothy, and Timothy came with a feeling that all was not well. “Mr. Anderson,” said Goldberg in his best magisterial manner, “I took you into my shop because I was short of a man and because I understood that you had had some business experience.”
“I have business experience,” said Timothy carefully, “of a kind.”
“I gave you particular instructions,” said Mr. Goldberg solemnly, “on one very vital point. We carry a full line of all the best proprietorial medicines, and our customers can always get them upon application. Each of those medicines we duplicate, as you know, providing the same constituents and charging some sixpence to a shilling less—in fact, we are out to save the public from being robbed.”
“I understand you,” said Timothy, “but I don’t see much difference between robbing the public and robbing the patent medicine proprietors, and all that just-as-good stuff never did impress me, anyway. It stands to reason,” he said, leaning over the desk and speaking with the earnestness of a crusader, “that the advertised article must be more even in quality and it must be good all round. You can’t advertise a bad article and get away with it, except on the first sale, and that doesn’t pay the advertiser. The goods sell the goods, and the advertisement is only to make you take the first lick.”
“I do not want a lecture on advertising or on commercial morality,” said Mr. Goldberg with ominous calm. “I merely want to tell you that you were overheard by my chief assistant telling a customer not to ‘take a chance’ on one of my own pills.”
“That’s right,” said Timothy, nodding his head vigorously. “Guilty, my lord. What about it?”
“I have had a further complaint,” said Mr. Goldberg, consulting with elaborate ceremony a little notebook. “I understand that you have initiated the awful practice of offering to toss customers for their change. People have written me strong letters of complaint about it.”
“Because they lost,” said the indignant Timothy; “what’s wrong about that, anyway, Mr. Goldberg? I don’t pocket the money, and I win twice out of every three times. If a fellow likes to take a chance as to whether he gets sixpence or we get a shilling, why worry?”
The outraged Mr. Goldberg brindled.
“That sort of thing may be all right at a country fair or even in a country shop,” he said, “but it is not good enough for the Parade Drug Store, Bournemouth, and I’ll dispense with your services as from this morning.”
“You’re losing a good man,” said Timothy solemnly, but Mr. Goldberg did not seem to take that loss to heart.
All “Take A Chance Anderson’s” jobs ended violently. He never conceived of them ending in any other way, and invariably regarded the sum of money which was received in lieu of notice, or as compensation for breach of contract, as being something in the nature of a nest-egg which a kindly Providence had foreordained, and he was neither cast down nor elated by the crisis in his affairs when, by a fortunate accident, he met Mary Maxell—the fortune was apparent, but the accident belonged to the category which determined the hour at which trains leave stations.
Hitherto, on the girl’s part, these meetings had been fraught with a certain amount of apprehension, if not terror. They had begun when Timothy had stopped her on the morning after his quarrel with Lady Maxell, and had made bland inquiries as to that lady’s condition. Then she had been in a panic and frantically anxious to end the interview, and it required all her self-restraint to prevent her flying at top speed from this wicked young man who had been so abominably rude.
At their second meeting he had greeted her as an old friend, and she had left him with the illusion of a life-time acquaintance. Hereafter matters went smoothly, and they went so because Timothy Anderson was unlike any of the other boys she had ever met.
He paid her no compliments, he did not grow sentimental, he neither tried to hold her hand nor kiss her, nor was he ever oppressed by that overwhelming melancholy which is the heritage and pride of youth.
Not once did he hint at an early decline or the possibility of his going away to die in far lands. Instead he kept her in screams of laughter at his interpretation of movie plays in the making. He did not ask for a keepsake; the only request he made of her in this direction was one which first took her breath away. Thereafter she never met him unless she had in the bag which slung from her wrist one small box of matches; for “Take A Chance” Anderson had never possessed or carried the means of ignition for his cigarette for one whole hour together.
Timothy told her most of what the proprietor of the Parade Drug Store had told him. The girl thought it was a joke, because that was exactly the way Timothy presented the matter.
“But you won’t be going away soon?” she asked.
“Not till I go abroad,” replied Timothy calmly.
“Are you going abroad too?” she asked in surprise.
He nodded.
“I’m going to Paris and Monte Carlo—especially to Monte Carlo,” he said, “and afterwards I may run across to Algeria or to Egypt.”
She looked at him with a new respect. She was less impressed by the great possessions which his plans betrayed than by his confident independence, and dimly she wondered why he was working at a drug-store for low wages and wondered, too, whether he was——
“What are you blushing about?” asked Timothy curiously.
“I wasn’t blushing,” she protested; “I was just wondering whether I could ever afford a trip like that.”
“Of course you can,” said the young man scornfully. “If I can afford it, you can, can’t you? If I go abroad and stay at the best hotels, and go joy rides in the Alps and plan all this when I haven’t got fifteen shillings over my rent——”
“You haven’t fifteen shi............