hrough the whole store, but recognized that
though he could have done this when he first arrived, he could not go
back and do it now without exciting his friend's suspicion that sympathy
was his motive.

He turned about at a point far short of the one he had intended to
reach, and made record time back to the city, impelled by an odd wish he
could hardly explain, to go by the windows of the great department
stores of Kendrick & Company and examine their window displays. Since he
was ordinarily accustomed to select any other streets than those upon
which these magnificent places of custom were situated, merely because
he not only had no interest in them but a positive distaste for seeing
his own name emblazoned--though ever so chastely--above their princely
portals, it may be understood that an entirely new idea was working in
his brain.

Speed as he would, however, running the risk as he approached the city
streets of being stopped by some watchful authority for exceeding the
limits, he could not get back to the broad avenue upon which the stores
stood before six o'clock. There was all the better chance on that
account, nevertheless, for examining the windows before which belated
shoppers were still stopping to wonder and admire.

Well, looking at them with Benson's forlorn windows in his mind as a
foil, he saw them as he never had before. What beauty, what originality,
what art they showed! And at a time of year when, the holiday season
past, it might seem as if there could be no real summons for anybody to
go shopping. They were fairly dazzling, some of them, although many of
them showed only white goods. His car came to a standstill before one
great plate-glass frame behind which was a representation of a
sewing-room with several people busily at work. So perfect were the
figures that it hardly seemed as if they could be of wax. One pretty
girl was sewing at a machine; another, on her knees, was fitting a frock
to a little girl who laughed over her shoulder at a second child who was
looking on. The mother of the family sewed by a drop-light on a
work-table. The whole scene was really charming, combining precisely the
element of domesticity with that of accomplishment which strikes the eye
of the average passer as "looking like home," no matter of what sort the
home might be.

"By heavens! if poor Ben had something like that people wouldn't pass
him by for the blanket store," he said to himself; and drove on, stil