Page:Short Grass (1926).pdf/28

 Bill inquired, desiring to show a citizenly interest, not altogether superficial, at that. He felt that putting his name on the paper to go to the secretary of state at Topeka had made him one of the brotherhood, in fact.

"I don't know how we stand to-day, but we're close, we're close. We've got sheets in some of the dumps that go by the name of hotels in this town, as well as some of the stores. We collect 'em when they're full, and paste them in a string. We've got a roll as thick as your wrist."

Bill Dunham made his reappearance in the hotel office, and on the stage of activities in Pawnee Bend, in about an hour, after putting the razor to his face and changing his shirt. It was one of Bill's leading principles to face a new situation with a clean chin and a clean shirt. If he hadn't learned much else of high value in business college, he had learned that.

Appearances Are Everything: that was his college motto. It was not done in Latin, old Roman lettering, over the door, but in the large, flourishing, long-tailed handwriting of the president of the institution as a copy for the business aspirants training under his régime. Appearances Are Everything. Bill Dunham had written it five thousand times.

Now he came down to the hotel office feeling pretty comfortable, like a fellow who has joined a lodge and taken the first degree. It wasn't as bad as he thought it was going to be; Pawnee Bend was not such a forbidding place as he had judged it from the station platform. Here they had the same homely human