man.

Mrs. Vandevort, a large, robust doll of a woman, directed the placing of rugs, furniture, hangings, objects of art, like one accustomed to having her own way with the best things that lie on the surface of life. She commanded Jenkins as an underling and ignored him as a huThere was a cast-iron quality about her, due to a lack of imagination and sympathy, which comes of never having been really hungry, hard-worked, happy. She used an elegant authoritativeness with Jenkins, exacting from him the price of each article and keeping an itemized list of the expenditure on a gold-mounted shopping-pad with a gold pencil on a gold chain, to which she constantly called her daughter's attention.

"That gold-satin cushion's just the thing makes a fine high-light. Do you see, Betty?" She prodded her daughter with the pencil.

The girl seemed to sit in a shining dream. "Oh yes, mamma-it's perfect simply perfect!"

Miss Vandevort rose and flitted about the improvised apartment daintily as a butterfly, while the older woman spoke to Jenkins of furnishings for sleepingporches, sun-rooms, library, den. Jenkins, dizzy with the possibilities implied, said he would be delighted to show the goods.

"It's noon, Betty." The lady looked at her watch and then out of the window. "Looks like an all-day rain. Well, we need it. What do you say, Betty, to our taking luncheon here and returning in an hour to have the den set up?"

"In the Iris Room, mamma? Oh, beautiful!"

The girl smiled, beautifully glad. She lived in a world where beautiful things happened and were always about to happen.

66

Events passed off splendidly. By four o'clock the den had been set up, the rain had ceased, the Vandevorts were gone. Jenkins, tired but happy, had proved his knowledge of the farthest reaches of the stock.

"It's your big drive, Mr. Jenkins,' crackled Miss O'Dowd of the cretonnes, ancient and wrinkled as a raisin. "And what's 's more, Joyce came down for a few minutes and saw you make it."

She knew, and the force knew, that Sprague could not have set up the apartments without Jenkins, and that Jenkins had done it without Sprague.

The handy - man wondered if Joyce knew this.

He washed, changed his collar and reported to Joyce on the tenth floor, at five minutes past four.

"A ten-thousand-dollar order and splendidly done, Jenkins, the way you set up the stuff. I had no idea you could do it alone." Joyce was crisp, salty. He did not smile or give Jenkins his eye. His mouth was straight and tight, instinct with discretion and economy, and better adapted for criticism than for compliment.

But Jenkins burned. It was a painfully fine moment for him.

"She spoke of furniture for library, sun-rooms, and sleeping-porches," projected Jenkins in shamefaced haste to divert the great man's attention from himself. "They're to telephone in the morning about sending the things."

Back in his own department, he went over to the window-seat. He felt like sitting down. So much had happened to him since morning. He was more tired and happy than he had ever been before in his work at Spalding's.

Below, in the wet street now cut with sunlight and purple shade, a street piano was grinding "Tipperary." Jenkins knew the chorus. He tapped a tired toe and hummed inwardly. Any kind of music stirred Jenkins, but his imagination was pictorial only on the subject of Molly, so, instead of seeing British soldiers on their way to Flanders, the music set him to elaborating his theme.

"A sale like this," argued this mild Alnaschar of the Chicago market-place, "means a sure-enough raise for me . .

and a place in the sun for Molly!" A place in the sun for Molly! How had he ever been clever enough to say that? "And just what Molly needed was to get out of the basement into the sun."

Then, to succeeding tunes of the street piano, he spread upon the screen of the freshly cleared sky a shining new reel— Molly and he taking the Edgewater car to look at a cottage on the lake advertised in the Sunday paper as "a small cottage on lake, porches, garden, modern, cheap." And when the street piano came again to the British marching song, and far away the British soldiers were marching toward old Bagdad, Jenkins, sitting like the Persian dreamer of that ancient city before his tray of crystals, laughed aloud from his dream.

A cottage on the lake" sounded grand, elegant-like the name of the palace Cyril Scott was furnishing for his bride.

"Hello, Jinks!"

It was Jimsy, the buttony elevatorboy-a young American cockney and snipe of the city byways whom Jenkins had rescued to the uniform of Spalding's, the night school, and a cot in the attic at Mrs. Madden's.

"Phone's on the blink. Joyce told me to hand you this."

Jenkins read the line in a violent tremulation: "Report at office ten-thirty tomorrow morning.' He rose and had to steady himself against the windowcasing.

"Wot's up?" put Jimsy, democratically. Next to Mrs. Madden, Jimsy might be said to be Jenkins's most intimate friend.

An odd glow dawned in Jenkins's eyes. There was something about the boy that always had a releasing effect on Jenkins.

"What's up? A cottage on the lakethat's what's up!" Jenkins grinned delightedly. "And you to dinner, Jimsyevery Sunday! I invite you now!—But mum's the word!"

When he met the appointment with Joyce at ten-thirty the next morning, no word had come from the Vandevorts. Jenkins was getting anxious, and Molly had trilled inquiries three times over the house wire.

"Better call them up," decreed Joyce.

Jenkins cheerfully took the receiver. The maid answered. And while she was gone to fetch her mistress he even found time for a swift little reel-Molly and himself at The Hearth Cafeteria that evening, celebrating.

"Well!" It was the authoritative note of Mrs. Vandevort.

"Good morning, Mrs. Vandevort. This is Jenkins at Spalding's. Would you mind giving me directions nowabout the goods?"

A brief silence on the wire, then a sentence that shot into Jenkins's ear like a bullet: "We've decided not to take the things."

"What!" choked Jenkins into the mouthpiece. "But you were pleased— delighted? Is there anything wrong? If so, we'll make it right. Would you like to have us store the things until you're ready?"

"By no means. Emphatically not. We've decided not to take the things.' "But you'll explain, Mrs. Vande

vort

"You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Jenkins. I have a caller."

Jenkins failed twice to get the receiver into the socket.

"What's the matter?" shot Joyce from the swivel-chair.

"She's decided not to take the things," mouthed Jenkins in a weak voice.

"What! What's wrong?"

"She didn't say." Jenkins was in a cold sweat.

"Didn't say!" snapped Joyce. "Give me that 'phone!"

Stricken with mental and physical nausea, the clerk listened. He stood like one who has come running against a jagged stone wall in the dark-bruised, bleeding. The highroad to promotion at Spalding's and the shining lane to Molly had gone pitch black.

Joyce was speaking in an incredibly polite, poised, conciliatory tone:

"So sorry to have to bother you, madame, but we simply have to ask you to explain-on account of the clerk. It reflects on him-and the house. We must know what's wrong. He's been with us twenty years—and it may result in his discharge. I know it's a nuisance to you, but if you'll speak, you'll save

our taking steps to investigate. It's intolerable that you should not have been satisfied. . . . Of course, madame, assuredly, absolutely confidential.

. .

...

Why, yes; that's exactly what we're here for.... We do. We advertise it and we mean it; we're always delighted to show the goods. . . . Yes, it was a very stormy day. . . . Very natural, madame. Ah, I see. . . . Well, we do. We appreciate the compliment very much, I assure you. . . Not at all, not at all. We are always pleased to show the goods. . . . Yes, indeed, we'll be delighted, madame. Just call us up at any time. . . . No, it is I who must thank you very much. . . . Yes, indeed. Good-by."

It was a long half-minute before Joyce looked at or spoke to Jenkins. He polished his glasses with one of those. magenta squares that oculists delight to furnish, and never seemed to get them quite clear enough. The ugly flame of the little rag under the desk-light hypnotized Jenkins, whose eyes goggled. Joyce laid the glasses on the blotting-pad and took out his handkerchief. In the silence the blowing of his nose became an appalling event. He adjusted the glasses upon a masterful beak, and from pupils magnified by the strong lenses sent out at Jenkins a look that impaled like a javelin.

'Strange Jenkins-" he brought out with cool acidity-"that it did not occur to you that it was a rainy day—yesterday and nothing doing in your department—and that the lady-was simplygiving her daughter-a lesson in shopping."

Jenkins stood speechless, white as a corpse that had died there on its feet without hope of resurrection. But a thought stirred in him sickeningly. Sprague would have understood these women from the first-would never have made a fool of himself putting in the whole day like that.

"What I wanted to speak to you about," resumed Joyce, gruffly, "is the space for the September sale. Get all of that Vandevort stuff cleared away for it to-day.

Jenkins nodded, dragged iron feet toward the elevator.

"And-Jenkins! Come back here!"

The sharp recall brought the clerk into instant right-about-face.

...

"What do you mean by starting off like that before I've done with you?. You tell Dawson to report to me at noon."

In a flash, as in dreams, Jenkins saw himself displaced by Dawson, doomed to dull, pictureless days as a clerk in a minor house, going like a clock, wound in the morning, running down at night, until old enough to be thrown away. He made another slow start for the elevator.

"Don't start off again like that, Jenkins!" blazed Joyce. "Can't you wait till I'm through with you? Sit down there sit down! . . . I want to talk to you. We're making changes. Sprague's to be merchandise man after August thirty-first. You go in at the head of the

Long after it was Molly who compared Joyce's smile to white light trying to get through black clouds on a cold November day.

At The Hearth that evening Molly chose ice-cream for the first course.

"I like it better than anything-so I eat it first-when I'm hungry." Happiness adorned her like a delicate haze. "Do you know how it tastes when you're very hungry?"

Jenkins, entirely indifferent to the sordid necessity for eating, regarded her intently, smiling, with an expectant look in his eyes.

Jenkins sat luxuriating in the surprise of her and the thought that he was to be assistant buyer. There was something about her that you couldn't get for money-like draperies and things at Spalding's. It was wonderful to think that she was born that way-that she would always be-like that. And then he heard himself speaking:

"We're going to take the Edgewater car on Saturday afternoon, Molly-to look at a cottage on the lake-a small one, with porches and a garden—for you and your mother-and me-to live in."

He had not known he was going to do it in that way! He had been worried as

to how he was ever going to do it. It was never done that way in the movies. All of the lovers in the movies had engagement-rings ready for use in their vest pockets, and there was always an embrace and a kiss. He had only a ringlet in his vest pocket. And he had only dreamed of kissing Molly.

He saw a pink stain rise from the slender stem of the girl's neck and settle in the lobes of her small, high-set ears. Then it occurred to him that he had taken advantage of her-that he must have surprised her since she, of course, was not aware of the advanced stage their affair had reached in the pillow pictures. She was sitting straight opposite him. The spoon half-way to her lips was arrested. She sent out a winged flash at him, took refuge under curtaining lids, blushed again because she had blushed. Then she exhaled a joyous little gasp.

"Are we-?"

She widened upon him dazzlingly, as though she somehow sensed his hidden dream of her as though the Edgewater car were the very chariot of the gods.

VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 815.-94