Part + 

II + 

VII + 

It was after an almost continuous thirty-six-hour session of work that Jerome Willing finally stepped out of his office, walked down the dark aisles between brown-linen-covered counters, nodded to the night-watchman, and shut the front door behind him. He crossed the street and turned to take a last affectionate survey of the building which sheltered his future. He was very tired, but as he looked at it he smiled to himself, a candid young smile of pride and satisfaction. It did not look to him like a four-storied brick front, but like a great door opened to the opportunity he had always longed for. + 

He stood gazing at it till a passerby jostled him in the dusk. “Well, well⁠ ⁠…” he shook his head with a long, satisfied sigh, “mustn’t stand mooning here; must get home to Nell and the little girls.” + 

As he walked up the pleasant street, between the double rows of well-kept front yards and comfortable homes, he was thinking for the thousandth time how lucky he was, lucky every way you looked at it. For one thing lucky just this minute in having an ex-business-woman for a wife. Nell would understand his falling head over ears into work that first day and a half of his return after an absence. She never pulled any of that injured-wife stuff, no matter how deep in business he got. Fact was, she was as deep as he, and liked to see him get his teeth into it. She surely was the real thing as a wife. + 

When he let himself into the front door of the big old house, he heard the kids racketing around upstairs cheerfully, with their dog, and was grateful, as he and Nell so often were, for the ease and freedom and wide margin of small-town life. It wasn’t in a New York flat that the children could raise merry hell like that, with nobody to object. + 

Through the open door he saw his wife’s straight, slim, erect back. She was in the room they had set apart for her “office,” and she was correcting a galley of proof, the ads for tomorrow’s papers. + 

“Hello there, Nell,” he cried cheerfully. “Got my head above water at last. I’m home for a real visit tonight.” + 

His wife laid down her fountain pen, turned around in her chair and smiled at him. + 

“That’s good,” she said. “What’s the news?” Although she saw that he looked haggard with fatigue, she made no comment on it. + 

“The news is, Mrs. Willing,” he said, bending over her for a kiss, “that I’ve got it just about all worked out.” + 

“Everything?” she said skeptically. “Even the bonus for the⁠—” + 

“Pretty much! The store is surely tuning up! Give her a month to work the bearings in, and then watch our dust!” + 

They looked at each other happily, as he sat down in an armchair and leaned back with a long breath almost of exhaustion. + 

“Just like a dream, isn’t it, all of it?” said Nell. + 

“You’ve said it! When I remember how I used to hope that perhaps if we scrimped and saved we might be able to buy a part interest somewhere, after I’d put in the best years of my life working for other men! Doesn’t it make you afraid the alarm-clock will ring and wake you up any minute?” + 

“But did you really settle the bonus question for the non-selling force?” asked Mrs. Willing, returning relentlessly to the most difficult point. + 

“I worked it out by giving it up for the present,” he answered promptly. + 

She laughed. “Well, that’s one way.” + 

“I tell you, I’ve given up trying to make it all fit together like clockwork. Jobs in a store aren’t alike. Salespersons are one thing, and you can find out exactly what they’re worth in dollars and cents and pay them what they earn. But when they don’t sell, it’s different. What I’m going to do is to decide on basic wages for all the employees who don’t sell⁠—just about enough to get along on. And then pull the really good work out of them with a bonus⁠—I’ll call it a bonus. It’s really a sort of disguised fine for poor work.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I wish you’d start at the beginning and get somewhere,” said his wife rigorously. “If I put woolly statements like that into my advertising copy.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Well, here’s the idea. Take the delivery crews for example.⁠—There’s only one of them now, of course, but there are going to be more soon. I offer them⁠—oh, anything you like, twelve or fifteen dollars a week. That much they’re sure of until they’re fired, no matter how they do their work! ‘But if you do your work perfectly,’ I tell ’em, ‘there’s ten dollars a week more,’ or something like that⁠—I haven’t made up my mind about the details.⁠ ⁠… ‘There’s ten dollars apiece for each of you if you get through the week with a perfect record.’⁠—No, that doesn’t put emphasis enough on team spirit; I’ll make it ten or fifteen for the crew to divide⁠—that’ll give them an incentive for jacking each other up. We put the money in dimes and quarters in a box with a glass cover where they can look at it. Then every time they run without oil, or with a dirty car, or lose a package, or let a friend ride with them, out comes a dollar or a quarter or fifty cents, depending on how serious the case may be. Don’t you just bet when they see their bonus shrinking before their eyes they’ll buck up and try? Of course I couldn’t use such a raw line with the better class⁠—the accounting department, for instance, but something with the same idea.⁠—By the way, that reminds me. I had to let Lester Knapp go⁠—remember him? That dyspeptic gloom, second desk on the left as you go in.” + 

Mrs. Willing nodded. “I don’t know that I ever noticed him, but I’ve heard about him through the St. Peter’s women. I thought you said you could manage.” + 

“I never really thought that. I knew I couldn’t right along. But I tell you, Nell, the truth is I’m soft when it comes to telling folks they can go. I hate to do it! I kidded myself into thinking Knapp might buck up. But it wouldn’t do. For one thing Bronson can’t stand him and I’ve got to back up my heads of departments. They’ve got to like their help or they can’t get any work out of them.” He sat forward in his chair and began playing with his watch chain. + 

“How did Mr. Knapp take it?” + 

“Oh, very decently⁠—too decently! It made it all the harder. He admitted, when I asked him, that his work didn’t interest him⁠—that he hated it. When I halfway offered to give him a try at the selling end, he said he was sure he wouldn’t like it any better⁠—was sure he wouldn’t do even so well there. He said he knew he’d hate selling. Then when I put it up to him whether he thought a man can ever do good work if he doesn’t like his job, he didn’t say a thing, just kept getting whiter and whiter, and listened and listened. I did my best to let him down easy. Thanks of the firm for long and faithful service, take plenty of time to look for something else, no hurry. But it was no go. He’s got plenty of brains of a queer sort, enough to see through that sort of talk. It was damned unpleasant. He has a very uncomfortable personality anyhow. Something about him that rubs you the wrong way.” His voice was sharp with personal discomfort. He looked exasperated and aggrieved. + 

Out of her experience of his world and her knowledge of him, his wife’s sympathy was instant. “It is hard on you having all those uncomfortable personal relations!” she said. “It always seems unfair that I can stay here at home with the children and draw a salary for writing advertisements that I love to do without sharing any of the dirty work.” + 

“It’s no joke,” he agreed rather somberly. He looked at his watch. “Will I have time for a cigar before dinner?” he asked. + 

“Just about. I didn’t know when you might be in, so the children and I have had ours. I told Kate to start broiling the steak when she heard you come in, but she’s always slow.” + 

He clipped and lighted his cigar with an air of immense comfort. Wasn’t it something like to come back to such a home after working your head off, and find everything so easy and smooth! + 

“I’ve often thought,” said his wife, “that letting people go would be the hardest part of administrative work for me.” + 

He drew his first puff from his cigar and relaxed in his chair again. “Did I ever happen to tell you about the first time I had to fire anyone?” He had told her several times but she gave no intimation of this, listening with a bright eager attention as he went on. “Way back when I’d only just pulled up to being head of the hosiery department at Burnham Brothers. She was a weak-kneed, incompetent, complaining old maid who was giving the whole department a black eye with the customers⁠—ought to have been cleared out long before. Well, at last I got my nerve up to telling her to go, and she took it hard⁠—made a scene, cried, threatened to kill herself, said her sick sister would starve. She was ninety percent hysteric when she finally flung out of my office; and I was all in. So I beat it right up to the chief’s office and sobbed out the whole talk on old J. P. Burnham’s bosom.” + 

Nell smiled reminiscently. “Yes, how we all used to lean on old J. P. when things went wrong. He always made me think of a dog-tired old Atlas, holding everything up on those stooped old shoulders of his. What did he say?” + 

“Oh, he didn’t look surprised. I suppose I wasn’t the first youngster to lose my nerve that way. He limped over and shut the door as if he was going to give me a long talk, but after all he didn’t say much. Just a few pieces of advice with long pauses to let them sink in. But I’ve never forgotten them.” + 

“No, you never did forget what he said,” agreed Nell. She was very anxious to get on to another matter of importance but she saw by her husband’s manner that he was talking himself out of his discomfort, so she gave him another chance to go on, by remarking, “But I don’t see what anybody can say about dismissing employees that would help a bit. It’s just horrid and that’s all there is to it.” + 

“Well, he sort of stiffened me up, anyhow. Reminded me that running a store isn’t philanthropy, that everybody from the boss down is there not to make a living for himself but to get goods sold. Made me see that for a department manager to keep an incompetent salesperson is just as dishonest as if he’d put his hand in the cash register. Worse, because the firm can stand losing a little cash enough sight better than having its customers snapped at and slighted. But what made the biggest impression on me was when he made me think of the other girls in the department who did do their work, how unfair it was to them to keep a lame duck that shoos everybody away from the department so they can’t make any sales. They don’t come into the office and throw a fit, but they don’t get a fair deal just the same. Besides incompetence is as catching as measles.” + 

“That’s so.” Nell saw the point, thoughtfully. “But it doesn’t make it any pleasanter when the one you’re dismissing is throwing the fit.” + 

“You bet your life it does not,” agreed her husband, drawing with satisfaction on his excellent cigar, “and old J. P. didn’t put up any bluff about it. He never said he enjoyed it. He said it was just a part of the job, and you’ve got to stand up to it if you’re going to grow up to carry a man’s load. You’re there to do your best for the business. He got another point over to me, a good one⁠—even for the lame ducks, it’s kinder to throw ’em right out as soon as you’re sure they can’t make good. Don’t let ’em stay on and gather mold till they can’t make a good try at anything else. That’s what made it so hard to tell Knapp he was through. Uncle Charley ought to have told him that, after he’d been a month in the store, twelve years ago. It’s a crime to let a man stay on and vegetate and get mildewed like that. It must have been clear for anybody but a blind man to see, after he’d been a month at his desk, that he’d never be anything but a dead loss in the business-world, what with his ill health, and his woolgathering, and his tags of poetry! Uncle Charley ought to have pushed him off to be a dishwasher, or a college professor, or one of those jobs that a man without any jump in him can hold. It’s just a sample of the way poor Uncle Charley let the business run downhill ever since he knew he had that cancer. You can’t blame him, in a manner of speaking. But the fact is that the whole works from the stockroom to the heating plant was just eaten up with dry rot.” + 

“I’m sorry about that Mr. Knapp though, personally,” said his wife. “He has a wife and three young children, you know.” + 

“The devil he has!” said Jerome annoyed. “Isn’t that just like him? Well, I’ll try to look him up tomorrow and see if I can’t suggest something else. Or give him a check with the thanks of the firm. That’d be the cheapest way out. I know right now there’s no getting any decent work out of him. Wherever I put him, he’d be like a bit of cotton waste clogging up an oil-pipe.” + 

“How about the accounting department, anyhow?” asked Nell. “Have you got it straightened out?” + 

“Yes, now that Knapp has gone I guess it will run all right. Thank heavens, there’s one department in the department-store business that’s pretty well standardized. That young expert accountant McKenzie and Blair sent on has straightened out the awful mess it was in. You can tell where you stand now without closing down and taking a month’s work to unravel the snarls. And I guess Bronson is young enough to keep it running. I’ll give him the chance anyway; he’s the livest wire on that side of the business if he is an awful roughneck! If he’ll come through, it’ll save time having to break somebody else in.” + 

“I rather think Mr. McCarthy may be good enough, too,” said Mrs. Willing. “Since you spoke about him, I’ve been watching his window displays. Of course they’re crude and he’s a bit old. But he has temperament and if you took him with you a time or two on buying trips to New York to let him look at the real thing and bought him a good modern manual on window-dressing⁠—poor thing! I don’t suppose he dreams there are books on his subject.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Her husband grunted. “Yes, there’s stuff in him. He’s pretty redheaded and touchy, but there never was a good window-dresser yet that wasn’t as prickly and unreasonable as a teething baby. We’d have to put up with that from anyone who had the temperament to do the work the way it ought to be done. But that’s about all the temperament I can stand. Thank the Lord, I won’t have to put up with a professional buyer. The more I think of it the more I’m sure I want to keep the buying in my own hands, every bit of it⁠—unless you want to come along sometimes, of course. But no highly paid expert buyers in mine! You know them as well as I do. Did you ever see one that wasn’t domineering and stuck on himself and dead sure he never made a mistake in his life?” + 

“Never!” Nell burned with a resentment of as long a date and as hot as her husband’s. “Never! What always made me the tiredest about them was the way they blamed everything on the selling force or the advertising office. If the goods didn’t move, was it ever their fault? Not once in a million times. It was because the salespeople couldn’t sell or the ad.-writers couldn’t write.” + 

“And yet look at the times they get suckered into buying a carload of what everybody knew was lemons, only we mustn’t let on, for fear of hurting their sacred temperamental feelings! No, by George, none of that in mine! I feel like sending up a Hallelujah when I think I’ll never have to baby one of them again and smooth him down and calm his nerves. I’ve had the experience and training to handle that whole thing for myself. And I’m going to do it!” + 

A gong boomed pleasantly behind him. “Dinner,” said Nell, getting up from her desk. + 

He threw away what was left of his cigar and went into the comfortable dining-room, his appetite whetted by the odor of steak, onions and fried potatoes. + 

“I bought a case of that near-beer Wertheimer’s has,” said his wife, uncorking and pouring out a foaming brown glassful. “I can’t see that it’s not just as good as it ever was.” + 

“Yes, tastes pretty good to me tonight, that’s sure,” said Jerome, taking a long drink and smiling as he cut into the thick steak. His wife let him alone while he took the sharpest edge off his appetite. She herself had often come in after working overtime in an office! But as he started in on a second round of everything, she said, “It’ll be a surprise for the old store, won’t it, to have somebody really buying for it after the junk that’s been loaded onto its shelves?” + 

“Uncle Charley,” pronounced Jerome, “never got beyond the A. T. Stewart 1872 notion of stocking up four times a year with ‘standard goods.’ ” They both laughed at the old phrase. + 

“Standard goods!” said Nell. “How funny it sounds! When you can’t sell a button the year after it’s made nowadays!” + 

“I just hope,” said Jerome, “I just hope to the Lord that some of that gang of crooks who used to sell Uncle Charley try to work the same game on me just once! Where in the world did they get the out-of-the-ark junk they used to work off on him? Must have had it stored in a barn somewhere!” + 

His wife thought silently that now, after he had eaten and was beginning on his pie, with a second cigar in prospect, perhaps she might get to the question she had really wanted to ask all along. “Did you see that young Crawford at Jordan Marsh’s?” she asked. + 

“Yes,” said Jerome. + 

And Nell knew that for some reason it was all off. “Won’t he do?” she said in disappointment. “You do need a store superintendent so awfully if you’re going to be away on buying trips.” + 

“Well, it’s better to wait and get the right person than rush in and take somebody who’d gum the whole works. Oh, nothing wrong with Crawford. He’s a comer. But the more I talked with him the surer I was that he wouldn’t fit. Nobody like him would fit into the organization the way we want it. That corking slogan of yours says it all⁠—‘The Homelike Store.’ Well, no smooth, big-city proposition like Crawford could be homelike, not in a thousand years. He wouldn’t want to be. He wouldn’t see the point. He’d be too smart for the town. He wouldn’t go to church. He’d play golf on Sundays. He wouldn’t belong to any of the societies or clubs. He’d drive a snappy runabout and beat it off to the city. The long and the short of it is that he’d be bored by the town and show it.” + 

Nell saw all that. She nodded her head. She tried to imagine him at a church supper in the basement of the First Congo Church⁠—and gave it up. + 

“Worse than that, it came to me,” said Jerome, “that any man with pep enough for the job would have too much pep. He’d want to look forward to being taken into the business. And I don’t want any partner but you. This is our store! But leave that alone. He wouldn’t know how to handle the girls. He’d be used to flip, knowing, East-side tenement-house kids. How would he get along with our small-town American high-school graduates who’re as good as anybody and know it? He might try to get gay with them⁠—you haven’t forgotten Ritchie at Burnham’s? None of that for our store. We’ve got little girls of our own⁠—and besides in a little place like this scandal gets round so quick and people take it so personally.” + 

“But you’ve got to have somebody. There are some pretty keen business women,” suggested his wife. “Why not try one of them⁠—they give more value for the same salary. They stick to their work and don’t make trouble. Mostly they have tact enough not to antagonize the customers. Don’t you think the business could afford one of the really good ones?” + 

“It can afford pretty much any salary for the right party. Nothing’s too good for our store, Nell! Yes, I’d rather have a woman any day. I’ve thought about one or two of the best I know. They’re good, good as the best⁠—wear the right sort of quiet clothes, don’t make a noise, always on the job, and they’d never make a row about not being taken into the firm. Yes, I like the idea of a woman for store manager⁠—but⁠—well⁠—none of the ones I can think of are exactly right. They don’t quite stand for the idea I’ve got for the business, don’t make the personal friendly appeal. You know how they are⁠—quiet enough and efficient enough, but they’ve got the big-town label plastered all over them, with their smart clothes and their permanent waves and their voices going up and down the scale. Half our customers would be afraid of them. And you hate people you are afraid of. I suppose a woman like that would do, but I’d rather wait a while to see if better material doesn’t come along. I want somebody the customers would think of as one of themselves.” + 

“Yes, of course that would be better,” acquiesced Nell. “But you have to take what you can get. Are you sure there’s nobody in the store?” + 

“I’ve been over the selling force with a fine-toothed comb. There’s nobody there who can go higher than floor manager. Miss Flynn, the head of the Cloak-and-Suits, is the nearest. She’s a wise old bird, with lots of experience. But she plays favorites with her girls, picks on certain ones for no special reason and protects others, no matter what they do. That’s the Irish of it. More temperament!” + 

“I suppose, anyhow, it’s always better policy to get an outsider. It means less friction. But it does seem as though we ought to be able to find someone in this town, someone who’s respected and liked by the people here.” + 

“If we could, she’d draw all the women into the store after her, as though they were her sisters and her cousins, especially if it was somebody known as a good buyer already. There are always some such in any community. We’d want a woman old enough to take care of herself but young enough to have all her physical stamina left, a nice woman, a first-rater, who could learn and grow into the job. Isn’t it exasperating how, when you have a grand opening like that for just the right person, you can’t lay your hand on her!” + 

“I could do it myself,” said Nell, “even although all my training has been in the ad department. I know I could.” + 

“You could walk away with it, Nell. But we need you for the advertising, and besides that job would take you away from home all the time. And of course somebody has to be here for the children.” + 

“No, I’d never consent to leave the children,” said Nell. “I didn’t really mean it. I was just thinking what fun it would be if there were two of me.” + 

“I wish there were!” said her husband, fervently. + 

“On second thought, I’m not at all sure I do!” she said, laughing. + 

They went back now into the living-room and sank down in armchairs, Nell with a cigarette. She had looked first to be sure that the curtains were down so that she was not visible from the street. “No,” said Jerome, “we’d better not consider either of us taking it. It would be a waste not to stick to the lines we’ve been trained for. I suppose it’s just a pipe dream to think I can find exactly the right person. But you can bet your last cent I won’t tie up for any long contract to anybody who isn’t exactly the right person. I’ve got a hunch that some day the right one will walk into the store and let me lasso her. And I’ve faith enough in my hunch to believe I’ll know her when I see her, and.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Isn’t that the phone?” asked his wife, suspending her cigarette in midair. + 

“Oh, Lord! I hope not, just when we’re settled for the evening!” cried her husband. + 

“I’ll answer it,” she said, going out into the hall. + 

When she came back she looked grave. “Oh, Jerome, what do you think? That Mr. Knapp has just had a terrible accident, they say. Fell off a roof and killed himself.” + 

Jerome’s impulse was to cry out blamingly, “Isn’t that just like him! Why couldn’t he choose some other time!” But he repressed this decently. “Well, what do you think we ought to do?” he asked Nell. + 

He was frightfully tired. The idea of stirring out of his chair appalled him. But he wanted to establish a tradition in the town that the store looked after its employees like a father. + 

She hesitated. “Let me run upstairs and start the children to bed. I believe we’d better go around to their house and offer to do anything we can to help out.” + 

VIII + 

As they stepped quickly along in the dark, they tried to piece together the chronology of the late afternoon for Knapp and decided that this tragic ending to his feeble life must have come even before he could have seen his wife to tell her of his dismissal from the store. “I’m so glad of that!” said Nell Willing, softly. “Now she need never know.” + 

Her husband gave a hearty inward assent. It was the devil anyhow to be so intimately concerned in other people’s lives as an employer was. + 

They found the little house alight from top to bottom, and full of people, whispering, moving about restlessly and foolishly, starting and turning their heads at any noise from upstairs. An old woman, who said she was the Knapps’ next-door neighbor and most intimate friend, stopped crying long enough to tell them in a loud whisper that the doctor said Mr. Knapp was still alive, but unconscious, and dying from an injury to the spine. The children, she said, had been taken away by a sort of relative, Mrs. Mattie Farnham, who would keep them till the funeral. Asked about Mrs. Knapp, she replied that Mrs. Knapp was with the doctor and her dying husband and was, as always, a marvel of self-possession and calm. “As long as there’s anything to do, Mrs. Knapp will be right there to do it,” she said. “She’s a wonderful woman, Mrs. Knapp is.” + 

The Willings sat for a time, awkwardly waiting, with the other people awkwardly waiting, and then went away, leaving behind them a card on which Jerome had penciled the request to be allowed to be useful in any way possible “to the family of a highly respected member of the Emporium staff.” + 

As they walked home through the darkness, they exchanged impressions. “That old neighbor’s head is just like a snake’s, didn’t you think?” said Jerome. + 

“She seemed very sympathetic, I thought,” said Nell extenuatingly. + 

“She did seem to think a lot of Mrs. Knapp,” admitted Jerome. + 

“All the women in St. Peter’s do,” said Nell. “Mrs. Prouty says she doesn’t know what they would do in parish work if it weren’t for Mrs. Knapp. She’s one of the workers, you know. And a good headpiece too.” + 

“I imagine she’s had to develop those qualities or starve to death,” conjectured Jerome, forgetting for an instant that the man he was criticizing lay at the point of death. + 

The memory of this kept them silent for a moment and then Nell asked, “Did you notice that living-room?” + 

“You bet your life I did,” said her husband with a lively professional interest. “The only living-room I’ve seen in this town that had any style to it. Did you see that sofa? And those curtains?” + 

“They say she’s a wonderful housekeeper. The kind who stays right at home and sticks to her job. You never see her out except at church.” + 

“No, I don’t believe I’ve ever laid eyes on her,” said Jerome. + 

“And people are always talking about how beautifully her children are brought up. With real manners, you know. And such perfect ways at table. How do you suppose she does it?” + 

“What did she ever see in Knapp?” Jerome cast out the age-old question with the invariable, ever-fresh accent of amazement which belongs with it. + 

“Oh, they married very young,” said thirty-year-old Mrs. Willing wisely. “I believe he hadn’t finished his course at the State University. He was specializing in English literature.” + 

“He would!” ejaculated Jerome, pregnantly. + 

His wife laughed. And then they both remembered again that the man was dying. + 

When they heard through Dr. Merritt that poor Lester Knapp would not die but would be a bedridden invalid, a dead-weight on his wife, the Willings along with everybody else in town were aghast at the fatal way in which bad luck seems to heap up on certain unfortunate beings. + 

“That poor wife of his! What has she ever done to deserve such a tragic life!” cried young Mrs. Willing pityingly. + 

“For the Lord’s sake, what’s going to keep them from being dependent on public charity?” thought Jerome, apprehensively. + 

He sent up to the house with a tactfully worded letter a check for a hundred dollars, saying he thought the store was under a real obligation to its faithful employee of long standing. “But,” he thought, “you can’t keep that sort of help up forever.” + 

“I needn’t have worried!” he told himself the next morning, when he found his check returned with a short, well-written expression of thanks, but of unwillingness to accept help which could only be temporary. “We shall have to manage, somehow, sooner or later,” the letter ran. It was signed Evangeline Knapp. “What a fool name, Evangeline!” thought the young merchant, somewhat nettled by the episode. + 

After this he was away on a buying expedition that lasted longer than he intended, and when he came home they had a set-to with leaking steam-pipes in the store. He thought nothing more of the Knapps till, meeting Dr. Merritt on the street, he remembered to ask for news. Knapp was better now, he heard, suffering less atrociously, with periods of several hours of relative quiet. There had been no actual fracture of the spinal bones, but the spinal cord seemed affected, probably serious effusion of blood within the spinal canal, with terrible nervous shock. + 

How doctors do run on about their cases if you get them started! Mr. Willing cut short any more of this sort of medical lingo by asking to be told in plain terms if the man would ever walk again. + 

“Probably not,” said Dr. Merritt, “though he will reach the wheelchair stage and perhaps even crutches. Still, you never can be sure.⁠ ⁠… But he is not a robust man, you know. I told you about his obstinate dyspepsia. I never saw a worse case.” + 

Mr. Willing’s healthy satisfied face expressed the silent disgust of a strong, successful man for a weak and unsuccessful one. “What in hell are they going to do?” he inquired. He added, blamingly, “Three children! Lord!” + 

Dr. Merritt found nothing to answer and went on, looking grave. He had helped all three children into the world, had worn himself out over the two older ones in their constantly recurring maladies, and felt for them the tenderness and affection we have for those who have given us much anxiety. + 

Jerome Willing was sitting at his office-desk, but he was not working. He was dreaming. Into the quiet of his office filtered a hum of activity exquisite to his ears, the clicking of billing-machines, the whirr of parcel-carriers, the sound of customers’ voices, buying merchandise. Out there the store was smoothly functioning, supplying modern civilization to ten thousand men and women. And it was his store! Not only did he reap the profit⁠—that was a small part of his pleasure. It was his personality which gave all those people the opportunity to satisfy their needs, that was educating them to desire better things. He called that a pretty fine way of doing your share in raising the American standard of living. It was a whale of a job to get it into shape, too. What a mess the business had got into during the stagnant passivity of the last ten years of poor Uncle Charley’s life. It was a wonder that so much as four walls and a roof were left. + 

Well, that just showed what an unheard-of favorable position it had, the old store. It hung on and kept alive like a rugged old lilac bush that you’d tried to cut down. What wouldn’t it do, now that it had somebody to water it and enrich it⁠—somebody who cared more about it than about anything else in the world? And somebody who had the right training, the right experience and information to do the job. That was what had struck him most forcibly during the last six months, when he had been walking round and round his new work, getting ready to take hold of it. He saw that there was wonderful opportunity not only for him, but just as wonderful for the store. And to take advantage of it every scrap of his knowledge of business would come in, all that he had picked up at trade conventions, what he’d learned out of books on administration, above all, every hour of experience. Yes, every one, from his first bewildered week as a salesman to the later years of the intoxicating battle of personalities in the Market, when on his weekly buying trips to New York, he had gone the round of the wholesalers, comparing values, noting styles, making shrewdly hidden calculations, keeping an inscrutable face before exquisite things that made him cry out inwardly with admiration, misleading buyers from other stores, keeping his own counsel, feeling his wits moving swiftly about inside his skull with the smooth, powerful purr of a high-class motor. If he could do all that just to be in the game, just to measure up to other buyers, what couldn’t he do now! + 

What a half-year he had had! What a wonderful time he and Nell had put in together in this period of waiting and preparation. No matter how fine the realization might be, he was old enough to know that nothing could ever be for them like this period of creative planning when, moving around his problem, he had studied it, concentrated on it and felt that he had the solution in his own brain and personality. It fitted him! It was his work! It was like something in a book, like a missionary going out into the field, like a prophet looking beyond the veil of the present. Yes, that was what it was⁠—he looked through to the future, right past what was there, the little halting one-horse affair, with its meager force of employees, so many of them superannuated, others of good stuff, but in the wrong places, all of them untrained and uninformed, dull, listless, bored, without a notion of what a fascinating job they had. He had looked through them and had seen the store he meant to have by the time he was forty-five; for he knew enough to look far ahead, to take his time, to build slowly and surely. There it stood, almost as plain to his eye as the poor thing that now took its place. He saw a big, shining-windowed building, the best in all that part of the state, with eighty or a hundred employees, trained, alert, on their toes, sure of their jobs, earning big money, developing themselves, full of personality and zip, as people can be only when they are in work they’re meant for and have been trained for. + 

It would never be what a man from the city would call a big business. He never wanted it so big that he couldn’t keep his hand on it all. It would be his business, rather than a big one. But at that, he saw now, especially with Nell getting a salary for doing the advertising, it would bring them in more income than anybody else in town dreamed of having. They could live as they pleased as far as spending went. Not that that was the important part⁠—but still a very agreeable one. + 

He was sure of all this, sure! By God, he couldn’t fail! The cards were stacked for him. A prosperous town, just the right size; goodwill and a monopoly of trade that ran back for forty years; no big city within fifty miles⁠—why, even the trains providentially ran at hours that were inconvenient for people who wished to go to the city to shop. And no rivals worth mentioning; nobody he couldn’t put out of business inside ten years. He thought again, as he had so many times, how miraculous it was that in the ten years since Uncle Charley had lost his grip, no Jew merchant had cut in to snatch the rich heart out of the situation. Nobody could do that now. He had the jump on the world. + 

With half-shut eyes he let himself bask for a few minutes in this glorious vision; then, picking up his hat and overcoat he left the office and, alert to every impression behind his pleasant mask of affability, moved down between household linens and silk goods to the front door and stepped out into the street. He had seen out of the tail of his eye how that Boardman girl was making a mess of showing lining silks to a customer, and made a mental note to call in Miss Atkinson, the floor superintendent, and tell her to give the girl a lesson or two on draping silks as you showed them and making sure that the price-tag was where the customer could get the price without having to ask for it. + 

He was really on his way to the bank, but as he stood in the front door, he saw that McCarthy was dressing a window for the sporting-goods department and decided to go across the street to look at it. Jerome was convinced that window-dressers never back far enough off from their work, never get the total effect. Like everybody else they lose themselves in details. He stepped across to the opposite side of the street and stood there, mingling with the other passersby. + 

As he looked back towards the store, he noticed a tall woman coming rapidly down the street. His eye was taken at once by the quality of her gait. He sometimes thought that he judged people more by the way they walked than by any other standard. He always managed to get a would-be employee to walk across the room before taking her on. This tall, dark-haired woman in the well-made dark coat had just the sort of step he liked to see, vigorous and swift, and yet unhurried. He wondered who she was. + 

He saw her slow her pace as she approached the store and stand for a moment looking in at McCarthy fussing with his baseball bats and bicycle-lamps. She really looked at him, too, as few people ever look at anything, as if she were thinking about what she was looking at, and not about something in her own head. He had a good view of her face now, a big-featured, plain face that looked as though she might be bad-tempered but had plenty of motive-power. She was perhaps forty years old. He wondered what she was thinking about McCarthy. + 

She turned into the store now. Oh, she was a customer. Well, she was one they wanted to give satisfaction to. He stepped back across the street and into the store to make sure that the salesperson to whom she addressed herself was attentive. But she was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she had gone directly upstairs. + 

He went along the aisle, casting as he went that instinctively attentive look of his on the notions and ribbons, and up the stairs to the mezzanine floor where his office was. He meant to leave his hat and coat there and go on in search of the new customer. He heard a woman’s voice inside the accounting-room saying, “Will you tell me, please, where Mr. Willing’s office is.” + 

He knew in a moment, without seeing her, that the voice belonged to the woman he had seen. That was the kind of voice she would have. + 

“This is Mr. Willing,” he said, coming into the accounting-room behind her. “Won’t you come with me?” + 

Arrived in his office, she took the chair to which he motioned her and said at once, in a voice which he divined to be more tense than usual, “This is Mrs. Lester Knapp, Mr. Willing. You said, you remember.⁠ ⁠… You wrote on a card that you would do something to help us. I thought perhaps you could let me try to fill my husband’s place. We need the money very much. I would do my best to learn.” + 

Mr. Willing had the sure prescience of a man whose antennae are always sensitive to what concerns his own affairs. He had an intuition that something important was happening and drew himself hastily together to get the best out of it for the business. First of all, to make talk and have a chance to observe her, he expressed his generous sympathy and asked in detail about poor Knapp. He assured her that he was more than willing to help her in any way to reconstruct their home-life and said he was in no doubt whatever that they could find a place for her in the business, though not in Mr. Knapp’s old place. “That office is entirely reorganized and there are no vacancies. But in the sales department, Mrs. Knapp. There are always opportunities there. And for anyone with a knack for the work, much better pay. Of course, like all beginners, you would have to begin at the bottom and learn the business.” + 

She answered in a trembling voice, with an eagerness he found pitiful, that she was quite willing to start anyhow, do anything, for a chance to earn. + 

He guessed that she had been horribly afraid of him, had heard perhaps from her husband that he was hard and cold, had dreaded the interview, and was now shaken by the extremity of her relief. He liked the gallant way she had swung straight into what she had feared. + 

To give her time to recover her self-control, he turned away from her and fumbled for a moment in his drawer to get out an employment blank, and then, as he held it in his hand and looked at its complicated questions, he realized that it was another of the big-city devices that did not hit his present situation. It would be foolish to give it to this woman, with its big-city rigmarole of inquiry⁠—“Give the last three places you worked; the address in full of last three employers; what was your position; reason for leaving,” etc., etc. He put it back in the drawer and instead asked the question to which he already knew the answer, “You have, I suppose, had no experience at all in business?” + 

But after all, he did not know the answer, it seemed, for she said, “Oh, yes, before I was married. My father keeps the biggest store in Brandville, up in the northern part of the state. It’s only a general store of course. Brandville is a small place. But I used to help him always. I liked it. And Father always made a good thing out of the business.” + 

Jerome was delighted, “Why, that’s the best sort of training,” he told her. “I always maintain that country-store methods are the ideal: where you know every customer personally, and all about their tastes and needs and pocketbooks. Did you really work there? Sell goods?” + 

“Yes, indeed. From the time I was a little girl⁠—after school in the afternoons and in vacation time. Father had a special little stepladder made for me so that I could carry it around and climb up to the shelves. I am the only child, you know. Father was proud that I liked to work with him.” + 

The vivid expression of her face as she told him of this childhood memory made Jerome Willing wonder that he could have thought she looked bad tempered. She looked like a live wire, that was all. And they never, in the nature of things, looked like feather beds. + 

“Well⁠ ⁠…” he said, to give himself time to think. “Well.⁠ ⁠…” He pulled an official-looking loose-leafed book over to him and began looking through it as though its contents had some connection with placing the applicant before him. But as a matter of fact the book contained nothing but some of his old reports from the Burnham days. He was turning over in his mind the best way to handle the situation. Should he put her in a slow-moving department like furniture or jewelry till she got used to things? That was the safe, conservative way. But he didn’t believe in the safe and conservative if a chance to move faster looked good. And at that it wouldn’t be much of a chance. If she didn’t pan out, he could move her back into the table linen, and no harm done. + 

He looked at her keenly to see the effect of his announcement. “I believe the thing for you,” he said, “is the Ladies’ Cloak-and-Suit department. I can put you right in as stock-girl till you get the hang of things. I always think stock-girl work is the finest sort of training for salesmanship.” + 

He saw by her expression that she did not know what a stock-girl was, that she did not realize what a privilege it was to be put at once in the coveted Cloak-and-Suits. But she rose at once. He liked the way she stood up, with one thrust of her powerful body. That was the way he liked to have salespeople get up, alertly, when a customer came in. It expressed willingness to serve and strength to give good service. The sale was half made, right there, he told his salespeople. + 

“I could go to work today,” she said. “I didn’t know⁠ ⁠… I hoped⁠ ⁠… perhaps. I put on a black dress to be ready in case you might have.⁠ ⁠…” + 

By George! She was ready to step right into it this minute. She slipped off her well-cut cloak and showed a severe black serge dress. + 

“Why, yes, if you like,” he said negligently. She took off her hat showing magnificent dark hair, streaked with gray. + 

He said casually, as if making talk, “I happened to see you watching our window-dresser at work as you came in. What was your impression of what he was doing?” + 

She said seriously, reflectively, “Well, Mr. McCarthy always seems to me to put too many things in his windows. I’ve thought a good many times that if he chose his things with more care and had fewer it might catch the eye better.” + 

“Well, Great Scott!” said Mr. Willing to himself in extreme surprise. Aloud he said impassively, “We haven’t talked wages yet. Stock-girls only get ten dollars a week to begin with, you know.” + 

“That is a great deal better than nothing,” she said firmly. “We have a few savings that will keep us going till I can get a start. And perhaps I may learn the business fairly quickly.” + 

“You bet your life you will,” said the proprietor of the store inaudibly. Aloud he said, “The cloakroom for salespeople is at the other end of the second floor. If you’ll put your things there and come back here, I’ll take you to your department and introduce you to Miss Flynn.” + 

When Jerome Willing came back to his office he stood for a while motionless, frowning down at his desk. “Yes, of course it was preposterous,” he told himself. He’d known her less than half an hour⁠—all the same he’d backed those crazy hunches of his before⁠—it had paid him to play his hunches! And if something like that did pan out⁠ ⁠… he fell once more into a reverie. She was just the kind of woman he was looking for, mature, with a local following, somebody the women of the town trusted. He could hear their voices plain, “Ask Mrs. Knapp to step here a minute, won’t you please? She has such good taste, I’d trust her judgment.⁠ ⁠…” And she’d be tied up so tight with a sick husband and family of children there’d be no chance of someone snatching her away and marrying her just after he’d taught her the job. It would be fun to teach somebody who wanted to learn. Creative work⁠—it always came back to that if you were going to do anything first-rate. You took raw material and shaped it with your own intelligence. If only she might be the raw material! If she turned out to have only a little capacity to study and get information out of books as well as the character and personality he was pretty sure she had. Wilder dreams had come true. His thoughts ran on again to the future of the store⁠ ⁠… with a competent manager keeping the wheels and cogs running smoothly⁠ ⁠… with him to do the buying⁠ ⁠… small lots at a time⁠ ⁠… every fortnight⁠ ⁠… quick sales⁠ ⁠… rapid turnovers that made low profits possible. With Nell handling the advertising campaign as only an intelligent college woman could, with just the right adaptation of those smart modern methods of hers to this particular small town they were serving. She was a first-rater, Nell was! It always had been fun to work with her even before they were married! And what a lark to work with her now! Good thing for Nell too! It had been asking a great deal of a real, sure-enough businesswoman like Nell to give it all up for Kinder, Küche, and Kirche. Nell had been willing, had been happy, had loved having the babies, had made them all happy. But now the children were both going to school it stood to reason she’d find time hang heavy on her hands, whipstitch that she was! And life in a small town was Hades if you didn’t have lots of work to do in spite of the big lawns and comfortable roomy homes. As far as that went, life anywhere was Hades if you didn’t have a job your size. You could see Nell had thought of all that (though she had been too good a sport to speak of it) by the way she had grabbed at this chance to get back into the old work, the work she’d loved so, and done so well at Burnham’s. Now if this Mrs. Knapp would only come through! + 

He brought himself up short again.⁠ ⁠… What a kid he was to let his imagination reel it off like this⁠—but a minute later he was thinking how he and Nell would enjoy giving an apt pupil steers, showing her how to use a microscope in fabric tests, how to know the right points of a well-made garment, how to handle her girls as she got along to executive work.⁠ ⁠… Oh, well, probably it was only a pipe dream⁠—and he knew enough to keep it to himself. + 

The clock in the National Bank opposite began striking. Jerome glanced at it and saw with astonishment that the hands pointed to twelve o’clock. Time to go home to lunch. As he got his hat and coat, he was wondering whether he had wasted a forenoon or whether perhaps on the contrary.⁠ ⁠… + 

IX + 

Mrs. Willing was as much interested as her husband in the arrival of Mrs. Knapp in the store. When he had finished telling her about the interview and they had laughed and wondered over the acuteness of the novice’s criticism of McCarthy’s window-dressing, Nell said reflectively: “Do you know, from all I’ve heard about her from the St. Peter’s women⁠—I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Jerome recognized the idea to which his wife’s imagination, like his own, had leaped, but he did not think it at all necessary to let Nell know that the same possibility had occurred to him. + 

He shook his head disapprovingly. “No, nothing doing,” he said. “Anybody that’s got so much pep to begin with, they’re always hard to handle. Want to boss everything.” + 

He was pleased to have his wife point out what had already occurred to him, the stranglehold which their relative economic situations gave them over Mrs. Knapp. “I don’t believe she’d ever be hard to handle or want more than you wanted to give her⁠—with all those reasons at home for holding onto a job,” said Nell. She had as good a business head as Jerome, however, felt as well as he how visionary it was to build even the slightest hopes on so slight a foundation, and now contributed her own share of cold water to the prudent lowering of their expectations. “But a woman with no experience of business! Women who have spent fifteen or twenty years housekeeping are no good for anything else.” + 

“I forgot to tell you,” said Jerome, “that she had worked some before she was married. Her father keeps the store in Brandville. I looked him up. Very good rating. She may get some of her ability from him. Those country-store men sometimes acquire a real business hunch. But see here, how can her family manage if she’s away all day? I didn’t feel like asking her. But I wondered if she could be depended on. There’s nothing more of a bother in a store than somebody who is always having to miss a day.” + 

“Mrs. Prouty was telling me how she’s got everything organized there. They are all saying it’s just like her. Mr. Knapp is fairly comfortable now and can read, and sit up in bed, and doesn’t need constant care. There’s nothing anybody can do for him, now, poor thing! The two older children are big enough to take care of themselves and dress their little brother and help around the house. It seems that several of the people at the store are being very helpful⁠—not salespeople or anybody in Mr. Knapp’s office but a couple of the delivery boys and one of the cleaning women. The cleaning woman, old Mrs. Hennessy, works at the store you see, before and after hours, so she can go to the Knapp house in the daytime an hour or so to do up the work. And the delivery boys take turns dropping in nights and mornings to look out for the furnace and empty ashes and do the heavy things. They stop in daytimes too as they go by to see if he wants anything. Oh, they manage, somehow.” + 

“How good poor people are to anybody in trouble,” remarked Jerome comfortably, pulling on his pipe and wondering for the first time if perhaps there really might be some truth in that threadbare remark which he had heard and repeated so many times and never believed a word of. + 

“They say Mr. Knapp was always very kind to them at the store,” said his wife, “the work people, I mean⁠—was lovely to old Mrs. Hennessy when her grandson had to be sent to the sanatorium. And he helped one of the delivery boys out of a scrape.” + 

The proprietor of the store frowned and took his pipe hastily out of his mouth. “He did! Which boy I wonder? What do you suppose he’d been doing? I’d like to know more about that!” He was very much vexed at the idea that something about which he had no information had been happening at the store. It was just like that impractical, weak-kneed Knapp to shield an erring employee and interfere with discipline! He felt again a wave of the inexplicable annoyance which every contact with Knapp had caused him from the first time he ever laid eyes on the man. Helping the delivery boys to cover up their tracks, was he? Lord! what a dead loss that man was every way you looked at him. He didn’t blame Harvey Bronson for being rubbed the wrong way by him and snapping his head off. Who wouldn’t? + 

He remembered suddenly that the man was now a bedridden cripple, cooled down, put his pipe back in his mouth and said aloud: “Well, I wish you’d drop in to the Cloak-and-Suits after a week or so and just get an impression of her yourself.” + 

Miss Flynn, the veteran head saleswoman in the Cloak-and-Suits told Mrs. Willing that the new employee was a wonder, and that the way she had taken hold made them all sit up. “She’s just eating it up, Mrs. Willing, just eating it up. She’s learned her stock quicker than anybody you ever saw, as if she loved it. Now I never expect a stock-girl to know where things are inside the first week; they do well if they do. But Mrs. Knapp⁠—every minute there wasn’t a customer on hand, would she fluff up her hair and get out her vanity box or put her head together with the other girls, turning their backs on the stairs⁠—not much! Mr. Willing had told her the way he’s told every stock-girl we’ve tried, that the first thing to do was to learn her stock and she went to it as if ’twas to a wedding! With never a word from me, she just tore off into the stock-cabinet every chance she got. First off, she made a list of the things, the way they hung and then as she worked I could see her look at her piece of paper, her lips moving, just like a kid learning a spelling lesson. And yet for all she was so deep in that, she’d keep her eye out for customers⁠—yes, she did! You wouldn’t believe a stock-girl would feel responsible about customers, would you, Mrs. Willing, when there’s nothing in it for her? But for a fact she’d keep poking her head out of the stock-cabinet to make sure nobody had come in; and once I saw her, when she didn’t know I was looking, spot a customer coming up the stairs, and go to stir up that lazy Margaret Donahue to get busy, and she reading a novel under the counter the sly way she does behind my back!” Miss Flynn perceived that she had wandered from the sequence of her narrative and added now, “Well, by studying her work like that, it wasn’t three days⁠—really, I mean it, Mrs. Willing, not three days before she knew where every cloak and suit in this entire department was hung, or if it had been sold. I heard Ellen O’Hern that can’t remember a thing ask her to bring out that blue knit cape with the astrachan collar, and Mrs. Knapp say to her, in a nice quiet tone, so the customer couldn’t hear, ‘That was sold day before yesterday, don’t you remember, to Mrs. Emery,’ and go and get a blue broadcloth cape with a white wool collar that was the closest thing to the other cape. And Ellen O’Hern made the sale too. It was a good choice. I asked Mrs. Knapp how she ever happened to think of picking out just that and she said the customer just looked to her as though that blue broadcloth would be her style. I believe she slept nights on that list of stock she made and said it over as she did her hair in the morning. Lovely hair she’s got, hasn’t she, if she is so very plain in the face. And yet look at the style of her! Sometimes I think that the plain ones have more style than the pretty ones, always.” + 

Before she had finished this aphorism, her Celtic wit perceived that her Celtic fluency had led her into what was rather a difficult position when she considered that she was talking with that important personage, the young and very pretty wife of the proprietor; and her Celtic tongue added smoothly, without so much as a comma, “though of course there are certain lucky people that have all of everything.” She smiled meaningly as she spoke, and told herself with an inward grin that she had got out of that pretty well, if she did say so.⁠ ⁠… + 

“Selling goods does polish people up to be the smooth article,” thought the wife of the proprietor, “but Miss Flynn thinks she’s just a little too smart. Flattery that’s too open is not the best salesmanship. It wears thin if you use it too often. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miss Flynn had lost more sales than she thinks with that oily manner. It’s more than probable that some of the silent country women who come in here go away without buying because they think that Miss Flynn is trying to make fools of them. No, she’s not really Grade A. But she’s so old she’ll have to get out before so very long anyhow.” + 

After this silent, inward colloquy, the voices of the two women became audible once more. + 

“Don’t you believe, Miss Flynn, that Mrs. Knapp could be tried out in saleswork soon?” + 

“I’d try her tomorrow if it was me,” said Miss Flynn promptly. “I bet a nickel she could knock the spots off that Margaret Donahue this minute.” + 

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Willing remembered, “Jerome had told her that Miss Flynn had that objectionable habit of ‘playing favorites’ among her girls⁠—the Irish were so personal anyhow! No abstract ideas of efficiency and justice.” + 

Aloud she said, “I’m going to suggest to Mr. Willing that you let her have a try at noon hours, for the next week, when some of the girls are out to lunch.” She added tactfully to avoid seeming to commit the unpardonable offense of coming in from another department to dictate to a head salesperson about her girls, “We’re both of us so sorry for Mrs. Knapp in her great trouble we would like to help her along.” + 

“Yes, indeed, poor thing! Poor thing!” said Miss Flynn at once, in a sympathetic tone. But all the same, something of the substance of the younger woman’s silent observation had reached her dimly. What was Mrs. Willing up to? She didn’t like people nosing around her department that hadn’t any business there. What was Mrs. Willing, anyhow, when you got right down to it? Just the advertising woman, wasn’t she? And what was all this interest in Mrs. Knapp about? Were they thinking perhaps of getting rid of another faithful gray-haired employee, as they had already in other departments. Her Irish blood warmed. There’d be something said before.⁠ ⁠… + 

A few days later, “We were mistaken about that Mrs. Knapp, Mr. Willing,” said Miss Flynn somewhat belligerently. “Mrs. Willing said you wanted to have me try her out in saleswork, so I gave her a salesbook yesterday, and explained how to record sales and all, and turned her loose at the noon hour. But she hasn’t got the stuff in her. I’m sure of it.” + 

“What makes you think so, Miss Flynn?” asked the proprietor of the store mildly. As always when it was a question of the welfare of the store, he called in peremptorily every one of his five senses and all his attention, experience and acumen. On the aspect, attitude, voice and intonation of Miss Flynn he focused all of those trained faculties in a burning beam of which she was happily unaware. What she saw was his negligent attitude as he tipped back in his swivel chair, sometimes looking up at her, sometimes down at the blotting paper on his desk, on which he drew, as if absentmindedly, an intricate network of lines, like a problem in geometry. She thought that perhaps after all the Willings were not so dangerously interested in Mrs. Knapp’s advancement as she had feared, and she relaxed a little from what had been her intention on entering the room. It certainly was a fact that Mrs. Knapp did need a job something terrible, with those three children and a bedridden husband and all. “Well, I don’t mean that she’s not all right, well enough, and a good worker and all, but no salesgirl. Why, let me tell you how she let a customer get away today. Let her get away! Pushed her right out of the store, I might say; wouldn’t let her buy what she wanted. I was watching from across the aisle, without letting on, to see how she’d do. She was helping out in sweaters because they were short of help this noon. I saw her showing the goods to a customer. I heard the customer say, ‘My, isn’t that lovely!’ and I heard Mrs. Knapp say⁠—you’d hardly believe it, I heard her say just as bossy, ‘No, I don’t believe that is really what you want, Mrs. Something-or-other, it wouldn’t be suitable for the purpose you.⁠ ⁠…’ And the customer looking at the goods as though she wanted to eat it⁠ ⁠… it was a dandy sports sweater too, one of the chickest we have. Somebody called me off just then, and I didn’t see what happened afterwards, but after Mrs. Knapp had gone back to the stock-closet at two, I went to look and the sweater was still there, and no sale of a sweater on Mrs. Knapp’s salesbook either!” + 

Her horror at such an utter absence of any natural feeling for the standards of her profession was sincere and deep. She felt that the recital of the bare fact needed no embellishment to make its significance apparent to any man in retail selling. + 

As she expected, Mr. Willing lowered the corners of his mouth and raised his eyebrows high as he listened. He looked down at the geometrical design he was drawing on the blotting paper. He thought silently for a moment, gnawing meditatively on one corner of his lower lip. Then, “I believe I’d better have a talk with Mrs. Knapp myself,” he said weightily; “send her in at closing time, won’t you?” + 

Miss Flynn went off, walking softly, and well satisfied. + 

He had made a point of not speaking to Mrs. Knapp except for a casual salutation since he had taken her up to the Cloak-and-Suits three weeks before, and now as she came into the office he looked at her hard to see what the experience had done for her, and make out if he could gather from her aspect, attitude, voice and intonation anything like the rich illustrative commentary which Miss Flynn had involuntarily given him. + 

“How do you like the work, Mrs. Knapp,” he asked her, in a dry, businesslike way, “now that you have had a little experience of it?” + 

He was touched, he was actually moved by the flush of feeling which came into her dark, ardent face as she answered, “Oh, Mr. Willing, I love it! I do hope I’ll give satisfaction, for I love every bit of it.” + 

Jerome Willing loved it so himself that he felt warm towards the kindred spirit. “I’m glad of that,” he said heartily, swept away for an instant from his usual prudent reserve, “and I think there’s no doubt whatever that you’ll give satisfaction.” + 

He added with an instant return to his dry manner, “I mean, of course, when you’ve learned the work. There is a great deal to learn.” + 

“Yes, I know,” she said humbly. “I feel how ignorant I am. But I try to pick up whatever I can. I’ve been watching with all my might how the salespeople work. The job of stock-girl gives you such a splendid chance to watch customers and salespeople. And yesterday Miss Flynn gave me a salesbook and let me come out on the floor at noon. It is very exciting to me,” she said, smiling a little, deprecating her inexperience and ignorance. + 

“How did you get along?” asked Jerome, with an increase of the nonchalant in his tone. + 

“I was so interested I could hardly breathe,” she told him. “You’re so used to it all, Mr. Willing, you can’t think how fascinating it is to me. I’ve always loved shopping, anyhow, though I’ve had very little chance to do much. And I’ve thought about it a great deal, of course, from the customer’s point of view. Now to be on the other side and to be able to try to do what I’ve always thought salespeople ought to do⁠ ⁠… it’s wonderful! Of course, nothing very extraordinary. Just what any experienced salesperson knows, without thinking about it, I suppose.” + 

“Yes, I dare say. What kind of thing?” asked the proprietor of the store, finding it hard to keep up his decent appearance of indifference when he really felt like a hound who, after weary beating about the bush, strikes a trail as fresh as paint and longs to give tongue to his joy in a full-throated bay. + 

“Oh, all kinds of things, too little to mention. Just what I’ve noticed in all the years I’ve shopped⁠ ⁠… why, here’s one. The way a salesperson gets up and comes toward you when you come in. I’ve always loved to have a girl get up quickly, as if she were glad to see me, and come towards me, looking right at me with a pleasant welcoming look. It’s always made me feel cross when they drag themselves up and come sagging over to me, looking down at their blouse-fronts or over my head⁠ ⁠… or especially at their fingernails. Isn’t it queer how it rubs you the wrong way to have a salesperson look at her fingernails?” + 

“Yes, that’s a good point,” said Mr. Willing guardedly, baying inwardly for joy. + 

“And then another thing I just love to be able to do is to know just where to lay my hand on anything. I’m afraid I’m very quick-tempered and irritable by nature, and I know I’ve started up and gone right out of a store, many’s the time, because the girl who was waiting on me would look and look for something I wanted, fumbling around absentmindedly as if she weren’t really thinking about it, and then call across to another girl, ‘Say, Jen, where’d you put that inch-and-a-half binding?’ ” + 

The proprietor of the store repressed with difficulty a whoop of delight over the exactitude of this snapshot. He looked down neutrally at his desk. + 

The new saleswoman went on, “I’d always supposed that it must be ever so hard to know where things are back of a counter from the way the girls often act about it. But it’s not! Not for me anyhow! No harder than knowing where your baking-powder and salt stand on the kitchen shelf!” + 

“Oh, no, it’s not hard at all for any salesperson who puts her mind on it.” Mr. Willing tossed this off airily and negligently. So successful was his manner that his employee thought she was being indiscreet and had forgotten to keep her place. “I’m taking too much of your time,” she said apologetically, turning to go. + 

He kept her with an indulgent gesture, “Oh, no, you’ll find I’m always interested in anything that concerns the Store,” he said grandly. “And you haven’t told me yet about the sales you made in your first try.” + 

She looked at him earnestly now and spoke seriously, “Mr. Willing, there is something that troubled me, and I’d like to tell you about it. I’d made two or three sales all right, and then a customer, Mrs. Warner it was, perhaps you know her, came in to look at sweaters. We’re just out of the plain, one-color, conservative kind, though Miss Flynn said you had some ordered and they’d be here any day. That was the kind Mrs. Warner asked for. But she saw another one in the showcase, a bright emerald-green one with pearl-gray stripes, the conspicuous kind that young girls wear with pleated gray crepe-de-chine skirts and pearl-gray stockings and sandals, and it sort of took her eye. I knew it would look simply terrible on her⁠—she’s between forty and fifty and quite stout⁠—the kind who always runs her shoes over. And I persuaded her to wait till the plain ones came in. I thought she’d be better satisfied in the end and feel more like coming back to the store. But Miss Flynn thought it was very wrong in me to have let her get away without making a sale.” + 

“Why didn’t you try to sell her both sweaters?” asked the merchant testingly. + 

“Oh, her husband is only a clerk in Camp’s Drug Store! They haven’t much money. She’d never have felt she could afford two. If she’d taken the bright sporty one she’d have had to wear it for a year. And I know her husband and children wouldn’t have liked it.” + 

“Oh, you know her personally?” asked Jerome. + 

“No, not what you’d call personally⁠—just from what I’ve seen of her here in the store. She’s quite a person to come around ‘just looking’ you know. I guess she loves to look at pretty things as much as I do. And several times when I hadn’t any customer on hand, I’ve had a little talk with her to make friends, and I showed her some of our nicest things, letting her see that I knew they were nothing she wanted to buy. I love to show off some of the pretty young things to women like that, who have to work hard at home. It’s as good as going to a party for them. And it gives them the habit of coming to the store too when they do want something. Then she happened to mention her name. I put it down on my list to memorize. I remember how I always used to like it when a salesgirl remembered my name.” + 

“Well, for God’s sake!” ejaculated the young merchant inaudibly, moved to an almost solemn thankfulness. Aloud he said, clearing his throat and playing with a paper-cutter, “Don’t you find it hard to remember the names of the customers?” + 

“No,” she said. “I’ve got a good memory for names naturally. And it interests me. I try to find out something about the customer, too, to put together with the name. It seems to keep me from getting them mixed. This Mrs. Warner, for instance, I looked up her address in the phone book and found out that she lives near one of my friends in St. Peter’s parish, and I asked my friend about her and she told me that Mr. Warner works for Camp’s. It helps to know something personal, I think. In odd moments, when I’m walking down to the store in the morning, for instance, I have my list in my hand, and try to hitch the people to the names⁠—this way⁠—‘J. P. Warner, drugstore husband, about fifteen hundred a year. Laura J. Pelman, teacher in Washington Street School, about twelve hundred. Mother lives with her.’ Inexperienced in selling as I am, I feel as though I could tell so much more what people want in merchandise if I know a little about them.” + 

“Yes, that’s so,” he admitted this point without comment. + 

He could hardly wait to get home and report this talk to Nell. She wouldn’t believe it, that was all. Well, he wouldn’t have believed it either if he hadn’t heard it with his own ears. And such perfect unconsciousness on the woman’s part! Apparently she thought that this was the way that all salespeople took hold of their work⁠—save the mark! + 

“That’ll do for today, Mrs. Knapp,” he said with dignity. “I’m glad to hear you like the work. You seem to be giving very good satisfaction. We⁠ ⁠… we⁠ ⁠…” he hesitated, wondering just how to phrase it. “We have been meaning to add one more salesperson to the Cloak-and-Suits, to see if the department would carry one more. If you like, we will try you out there, beginning with next week. The pay is no higher. But of course you get a bonus on all sales after your weekly quota is reached.” + 

“Thank you very much, Mr. Willing,” she said, with some dignity of her own, the dignity of a mature woman who knows that she is useful. + 

He liked her for her reserve. She turned away. + 

He called after her, as though it were a casual notion, just come into his head, “Are you anything of a reader? Would you be interested in looking at a manual on retail selling? I have a pretty good one here that gives most of the general principles. Though of course nothing takes the place of experience.” + 

Her reserve vanished in a flash. Her strongly marked, mature face glowed like a girl’s. She came swiftly back towards him, her hand outstretched, “Oh, are there books written about the business?” she cried eagerly. “Things you can study and learn?” + 

X + 

Evangeline Knapp was eating her breakfast with a good appetite, the morning paper propped up in front of her, so that she could study attentively Mrs. Willing’s clever advertising for the day. She admired Mrs. Willing’s talent so much! That was something she could never do, not if her life depended on it! She had always hated writing, even letters. Everything in her froze stiff when she took up a pen. But she knew enough to appreciate somebody who could write. And Mrs. Willing could. Her daily advertisements were positively as good as a story⁠—better than most stories because there was no foolishness about them. This morning, for instance, as Evangeline sipped her coffee, she enjoyed to the last word the account of the new kitchen-cabinets at the Emporium, and Mrs. Willing’s little story about the wonderful way in which American ingenuity had developed kitchen conveniences! Good patriotism, that was, too. She knew that all over town women were enjoying it with their breakfast and would look around their own kitchens to see how they could be improved. The kitchenware department would have a good day, she thought unenviously, her pride in the store embracing all its departments. + 

She moved to the cashier’s desk to pay for her breakfast, for she took her breakfast downtown, as the easiest way to manage things at home in the morning. The children didn’t need to be off to school until an hour after she left the house, and this plan left them more time to get their breakfast without hurrying. The cashier gave her a pleasant good morning as he handed over the change, and asked how all the family were that morning. Everybody in town knew what troubles Mrs. Knapp had, and how brave she was about them. As he asked the question he was thinking to himself, “Nobody ever heard her complain or look depressed⁠—and yet how forlorn for a homebody such as she had always been to get her breakfast in a cafeteria like a traveling-man!” + 

“Mr. Knapp is really pretty well,” she answered cheerfully; “he gets about in his wheel chair wonderfully well, considering. Takes care of himself entirely now, even dressing and undressing. And the children are splendid. So helpful and brave.” + 

“Your children would be!” said the cashier, who was a distant relative of Miss Flynn’s. But he really did admire Mrs. Knapp very much. Evangeline smiled to acknowledge the compliment, which she took very much as a matter of course. That was the kind of thing everyone always said to her. She corrected the smile with a sigh and said earnestly, “Of course it is dreadfully hard for a mother to be separated from her children; but we all have to do the best we can.” + 

“Oh, yes, dreadfully,” agreed the cashier sympathetically. Mrs. Knapp had made the same remark to him several times before, but he was used to that. Customers always repeated themselves. It was part of the business not to notice it. She went on now, repeating herself again, and he listened with his usual patience. “The hardest part for me was to make up my mind to let things go at the house. If I do say it, I’d always done my duty by my housekeeping.” + 

The cashier murmured his usual ejaculation of assent. + 

“Dr. Merritt had just put his foot down that I was not to do one thing at the house after I got home from the store. But you know how it is, you can’t help yourself when you see all there is to be done. I used to turn right in those first weeks and clean house every Sunday from morning till night. But I had to give it up. I found I was no good at the store on Mondays, unless I got my rest. And of course, that.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Yes, of course that!” acquiesced the cashier. + 

“So now I just look the other way and think about something else,” she said bravely, bestowing the change in her purse. + 

The cashier nodded as she turned away, noticing that she folded her morning paper and put it under her arm with the exact gesture of any other businessman. + 

He had sent her away, as he had intended, well satisfied with life, and as she walked along to her work, she was turning over in her mind some of the reasons for her satisfaction. The children were coming along splendidly, she thought, remembering lovingly how sweet they had looked this morning as she kissed them goodbye; Helen still in her petticoat, combing her hair, turning a freshly washed, rosy face up towards her tall mother; Henry pulling on his little trousers and reading out of that absurd conundrum book Lester had borrowed of Mattie for him; Stephen poking his head out from under Lester’s bedclothes like a chicken sticking its downy crest through the old hen’s wings! Stephen slept downstairs, beside his father’s bed, in a little cot that slipped under Lester’s bed in the daytime. He was always scrambling into bed with Lester in the morning. As she dressed upstairs, she often heard their voices, talking and laughing together. Lester had of course plenty of time for that sort of thing, since he did not have to hurry about getting an early breakfast for anyone. And Stephen seemed to have passed a sort of turning-point in his life and was much less troublesome than he had been. Mattie Farnham had always said that perhaps Stephen would just outgrow those naughty spells! She said children often did between five and six. + 

As always she was the first of the selling force in at the doors of the Emporium and the first in her department. She loved this tranquil taking possession of the day’s work. It was one of the reasons why she breakfasted at the cafeteria. She liked to check up on all the necessary, before-opening-time activities, and be sure they were all finished in good shape by the time the first customer came in. This was not really her business of course, but as she always willingly lent a hand, the stock-girls and cleaning women did not object. This morning she found that the stock-girls had not finished taking off the covers, and at once began to help, reminding the stock-boy over her shoulder about the thorough morning airing which Mr. Willing thought so important. + 

What a wonderful man he was! It was an education to work for him. He never forgot a detail. “If the air in the store is close and low in oxygen, the whole selling pace is slower,” he had told her; “customers are dopy and salespersons can’t stay right up on their toes as they ought.” How true that was! And how wise! She had had no idea there was so much to retail selling. + 

As her long, quick fingers folded the great covers, she was thinking of those fascinating books Mr. Willing had loaned her, books she had devoured as a child devours fairytales, which she was now rereading slowly and making her own. The chapter on textiles, how to distinguish linen from cotton and all that⁠—how absorbingly interesting that had been! She had sat up till midnight to finish it. She had never dreamed that anything in a book could hold her attention so. How like amateur guesswork it made all her earlier information seem. And then to have Mrs. Willing loan her that microscope, “to keep as long as you need,” to study and analyze fabrics. How good the Willings were to her! Such kind young people as well as such awfully clever and educated ones. + 

Together with the stock-girl she began running through her stock to make sure everything was right before the real business of selling began. She had timed herself and found that it took her just forty seconds per suit or cloak to make sure that hooks and eyes were firmly on, buttons all right, belts properly tacked in place, and the price-ticket on. There was therefore no reason why she shouldn’t go through all the stock for which she was responsible every morning and lay to one side any garment that needed attention. Afterwards, rapidly as she sewed, a quarter of an hour of work with needle and thread, and there she was, ready for the day, her mind at peace about her merchandise. If there was anything she detested it was to see a garment offered to a customer with a hook hanging loose, or a button dangling, or to see a saleswoman paw it all over without finding any price-ticket. It gave her a warm feeling of comfort to be quite sure that this could not happen with any of the garments in her department. Also she enjoyed, sensuously enjoyed, handling those beautiful, well-made garments, with their exquisitely tailored details which she who had struggled so long with the construction of garments could so professionally appreciate. + 

And the new merchandise, as it was brought in from the receiving-room! What a joyful, excitement to welcome the newcomers, with their amusing and ingenious little novelties of finish and style and cut! What a wonderful buyer Mr. Willing was! Nobody had ever seen such garments in town before, so simple, so artistic, so perfect! They filled one’s cup to overflowing with speechless satisfaction, they were so exactly right! Here was that new homespun suit, just in yesterday, in that lovely new shade of mauve. Whoever in that town had heard of a mauve tailor-made suit? And yet how lovely it was, and how suitable, even for a middle-aged woman. Why, yes, especially for a middle-aged woman! It would be a real comfort to a woman who had just begun to feel sad over losing her youth. Every time she put the suit on it would be a kind, strong reassurance that although youth was going, comeliness and a quieter beauty were still within reach. + 

Evangeline held the suit up, looking at it and thinking gratefully how it would help some woman through a difficult year in her life. She remembered suddenly the Mrs. Warner who had so pathetically longed for that bright green sports sweater. This would satisfy her wistful, natural longing for pretty things and yet be quite suitable for her age. Evangeline had so much sympathy for women struggling with the problem of dressing themselves properly at difficult ages! Of course this suit was much, much more expensive than anything Mrs. Warner had ever worn. But, thought Evangeline earnestly, wasn’t it always the truest wisdom to make any sacrifice for the sake of getting the real thing? + 

She slipped it back on the hanger and turned to that black velours-de-laine fur-trimmed cloak that had been so slow to sell. What ever was the matter with it? Why couldn’t they get rid of it! Marked down as it was by this time, it was a wonderful bargain! How queer it was about some things, how⁠—quite mysteriously⁠—they simply did not take. That black cloak was known all over the floor, and when a saleswoman got it out to show a customer, all the other salespersons turned their heads to watch if this time it wouldn’t go. But it never had. + 

She looked at it hard, boring her mind into the problem as deep as she could drive it. But no inspiration came. The garment went back on the hanger after an inspection of its fastenings. Ah, here was the first customer! She turned to greet her warmly, with the exhilarated dash of a swimmer running out along the springboard for the first dive of the day. “Good morning, Mrs. Peterson,” she said, smiling her welcome. “Come to see that sports suit for your daughter again? I’m so thankful I can tell you that it is still here. It was almost sold yesterday. Mrs. Hemingway was considering it. But it is really much more suitable for your Evelyn, with that glorious coloring of hers.” + 

She had plunged off the springboard with her athletic certainty of movement. And now she was in her real element, glowing and tingling, every nerve-center timed up to the most heartily sincere interest in what Mrs. Peterson’s daughter would wear that spring. Evelyn Peterson would look simply stunning in that sports suit, with those rose-pink cheeks and her glistening blonde hair! Evangeline gloried in the brilliant good looks of girls! There was a period between eighteen and twenty-three when it was as good as a feast to dress one. + 

Mrs. Peterson was drawn along after her enthusiasm as a piece of paper is drawn fluttering after an express train. She said, “Well, I had come to say that Mr. Peterson and I have about decided that it was too expensive a suit for Evelyn, but now I’m here, I guess I’ll look at it again.” + 

Mrs. Knapp’s day had begun. + 

That evening after supper they had the comfortable game of whist which had come to be one of the family institutions of late. Lester had taught Helen and Henry how to play and after Stephen was in bed in his little cot, sociably close to them, they usually moved into the next room for a rubber. Evangeline thought that she thought it rather a foolish waste of time; but she did not demur, because she did not like to refuse poor Lester anything that would lighten his dreary life. She had liked to play cards in her youth and found that she had still quite a taste for the game. She played well, too, and usually held good hands. Henry had, it now appeared, inherited from her considerable “card sense” and with her as a partner, they more than held their end up. Lester and Helen, notoriously absentminded, often made fearful mistakes, which set them all into gales of laughter and advanced the cause of their opponents notably. One of the family jokes was the time when Lester, holding only one trump, had triumphantly led it out as a sneak lead! + 

“If it amuses Lester and the children.⁠ ⁠…” thought Evangeline, dealing the cards swiftly and deftly, and enjoying herself very much, she and Henry just now having won their third game in succession. + 

She did not know that they were all frightfully uneasy that evening. Stephen had been coming in and out of the house all day, and just the instant before Mother was expected, they discovered that on one occasion he must have climbed up on the sofa with his muddy rubbers! There were lumps of crumbling, drying mud all up and down it. They were wildly brushing it off when they heard Mother’s quick strong step on the porch and had scurried to cover. There were lots of lumps left yet. Suppose Mother should see them. + 

It was all right so long as they were playing whist. They had put Mother’s chair with its back to the sofa. But afterwards, when she and Father settled down to their evening of reading and studying, what would happen? + 

When nine o’clock struck, Helen and Henry stood up to start to bed. And Mother⁠ ⁠… oh!⁠ ⁠… after strolling about absently a moment she went and sat down on the sofa! + 

And never said a word. Never noticed a thing! Just sat there for a moment, thinking, and then jumped up to make a note in her store-book where she methodically put down her every idea! How was that for luck, their shining eyes said to each other silently, as the children kissed their father and mother good night, and went off upstairs. + 

It had come to her, right out of nowhere, as one’s best thoughts always come, that the thing to do with that black, fur-trimmed velours-de-laine cloak was to sell it to Mrs. Prouty in place of the fur coat which she coveted so and couldn’t possibly afford. It would actually, honestly, look better on Mrs. Prouty’s too-rounded dumpy figure than the fur coat. Her conviction was instantly warm! The earnest words came rushing to her lips. She heard herself saying fervently, “You see, Mrs. Prouty, a fur coat has no line. The only people who look well in one are the flat, long, bean-pole variety. But a well-cut, well-tailored coat like this⁠ ⁠… just see how that flat, strap trimming carries the eye up and down and doesn’t add to the bulk. And those great fur cuffs and collar give all the richness of the fur coat without the.⁠ ⁠…” Oh, she knew she could do it! She could just see Mrs. Prouty’s wistful eyes brightening, her anxious face softening into satisfaction and content. + 

And what a feather in her cap if she could be the one to work off that unsalable cloak! + 