all modern improvements, ten
dollars; advertising, five dollars; profit, five dollars--total, forty
dollars. We figure here: cost of garment, twenty dollars; store
expenses, fifty cents; profit, four dollars and fifty cents; total,
twenty-five dollars. Put it on, Hattie, and let's see how you look in
the garment."

"Well, I declare!" Mrs. Duryea exclaimed as she allowed herself to be
assisted into the garment. "You take my breath away."

Max stepped back to survey the effect; and if the admiration expressed
in his face was simulated, at least the friendliness of his smile was
not.

"Now, Hattie, I want to tell you something," he declared: "If any one
would say to me that I went to school with you I'd think they had a bad
memory. I'd tell 'em it was your mother that sat next to me in Miss
Johnson's room and not you."

Mrs. Duryea fairly beamed as she strutted up and down the store.

"Well, Max," she said at last, "let me bring my friend Mis' Williams in
this afternoon and we'll decide on it then."

"But I thought you were going to Syracuse," Max rejoined.

"I was," Mrs. Duryea said as she started to leave; "but I ain't now."

* * * * *

The news of Max Kirschner's return spread through Cyprus like a brush
fire, and twenty minutes after Mrs. Duryea had left Sam Green's store
Max was holding a levee behind the old counter. By two o'clock he had
greeted over fifty old friends and at least twenty of them had made
purchases in amounts varying from five to thirty dollars.

"As sure as you're standing there, Mr. Kirschner," Sam declared, "I sold
more goods this morning as in the last two months."

Max grinned delightedly. His face was flushed and he looked at least ten
years younger as he patted Sam on the shoulder.

"Look out for the rush this afternoon," he said. "If we only had a
better assortment, Green, I think we could keep this up for a week
longer and after that we could do a good, steady business."

"We?" Sam exclaimed.

Max coloured and smiled in an embarrassed fashion.

"Of course I mean you," he said.

"Why 'of course'?" Sam asked; and Mrs. Green nodded vigorously. "Why not
we, Mr. Kirschner?"

"Well, you see, I haven't sold goods at retail for so long," Max
explained, "that I really don't know how."

Sam turned to Mrs. Green with a quick shrug.

"_Was hast du gehoert?_" he cried. "He don't know how! If I wouldn't know
how to sell goods the way you don't know h