Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/214

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one after another, like large, yellow snow-flakes down upon the president's desk.

The chief executive of Judson-Morris scanned these, first with eagerness and then with satisfaction. They carried orders for Nemos at the new price—a dozen here, twenty there, a hundred yonder, and George was eagerly penciling the totals, as men total election returns.

Big orders began to come in—great, ringing, hopeful messages from the Atlantic seaboard. One thousand Nemos at the new price were accepted by Philadelphia, eight hundred by Boston, four hundred by Baltimore, two thousand by New York.

But from the Middle West, that great absorber of medium and low-priced automobiles, and from the wide Pacific coast, there was only silence—except in isolated instances. Telephone calls and flash messages of inquiry plunged impatiently into this silent territory brought only Pessimistic response with pleas for more time to let the trade express itself and plain intimation that the cut had come too late.

But the waiting, the watching, and the hoping continued all day in the office of President Judson and on into the night. It was resumed upon the second and the third day, but upon the fourth even George Judson himself had to confess that the first-day voice out of the Middle West was right. The cut had come too late;