the place for a good while. It's a
funny old place in Sixth Avenue--"

"Sixth _Avenue_!"

"Don't interrupt--where the dearest old codger in the world is just
going out of the house-furnishing business in a small way. It's kept
getting smaller and smaller--I've watched it shrink--till now it can't
stand up against the big shops, and the old codger told me the other
day that it was no use."

"Poor fellow!"

"No. He's not badly off, and he's going back up-state where he came
from about forty years ago, and he can live--or die--very well on what
he's put by. I've known him rather a good while, and we've been
friends ever since we've been acquainted."

"Go on," the elderly girl said.

Erlcort was not stopping, but she spoke so as to close her mouth,
which she was apt to let hang open in a way that she did not like; she
had her intimates pledged to tell her when she was doing it, but she
could not make a man promise, and she had to look after her mouth
herself with Erlcort. It was not a bad mouth; her eyes were large, and
it was merely large to match them.

"When shall you begin--open shop?" she asked.

"My old codger's lease expires in the fall," he answered, "but he
would be glad to have me take it off his hands this spring. I could
give the summer to changing and decorating, and begin my campaign in
the fall--the first of October, say. Wouldn't you like to come some
day and see the old place?"

"I should love it. But you're not supposing I shall be of the least
use, I hope? I'm not decorational, you know. Easel pictures, and small
ones at that."

"Of course. But you are a woman, and have ideas of the cozy. I mean
that the place shall be made attractive."

"Do you think the situation will be--on Sixth Avenue?"

"It will be quaint. It's in a retarded region of low buildings, with a
carpenter's shop two doors off. The L roars overhead and the surface
cars squeal before, but that is New York, you know, and it's very
central. Besides, at the back of the shop, with the front door shut,
it is very quiet."

The next day the friends lunched together at an Italian restaurant
very near the place, and rather hurried themselves away to the old
codger's store.

"He _is_ a dear," Margaret whispered to Erlcort in following him about
to see the advantages of the place.

"Oh, mine's setting-hen's time," he justified his hospitality in
finally asking them to take seats on a nail-keg apiece. "You mustn't
think you're int