dam."

"No; we don't keep silk or lisle gloves. We have no call for them; our
customers prefer kid."

Oh, but he was in his element, was Claude Merrill; though the glamour
that surrounded him in the minds of the Edgewood girls did not emanate
wholly from his finicky little person: something of it was the glamour
that belonged to Boston,--remote, fashionable, gay, rich, almost
inaccessible Boston, which none could see without the expenditure of
five or six dollars in railway fare, with the added extravagance of
a night in a hotel, if one would explore it thoroughly and come home
possessed of all its illimitable treasures of wisdom and experience.

When Claude came to Edgewood for a Sunday, or to spend a vacation with
his aunt, he brought with him something of the magic of a metropolis.
Suddenly, to Rose's eye, Stephen looked larger and clumsier, his shoes
were not the proper sort, his clothes were ordinary, his neckties were
years behind the fashion. Stephen's dancing, compared with Claude's, was
as the deliberate motion of an ox to the hopping of a neat little robin.
When Claude took a girl's hand in the "grand right-and-left," it was
as if he were about to try on a delicate glove; the manner in which he
"held his lady" in the polka or schottische made her seem a queen. Mite
Shapley was so affected by it that when Rufus attempted to encircle her
for the mazurka she exclaimed, "Don't act as if you were spearing logs,
Rufus!"

Of the two men, Stephen had more to say, but Claude said more. He was
thought brilliant in conversation; but what wonder, when one considered
his advantages and his dazzling experiences! He had customers who were
worth their thousands; ladies whose fingers never touched dish-water;
ladies who would n't buy a glove of anybody else if they went
bare-handed to the grave. He lived with his sister Maude Arthurlena in a
house where there were twenty-two other boarders who could be seated at
meals all at the same time, so immense was the dining-room. He ate his
dinner at a restaurant daily, and expended twenty-five cents for it
without blenching. He went to the theater once a week, and was often
accompanied by "lady friends" who were "elegant dressers."

In a moment of wrath Stephen had called him a "counter-jumper," but it
was a libel. So short and rough a means of exit from his place of power
was wholly beneath Claude's dignity. It was with a "Pardon me, Miss
Dix," that, the noon hour having arrived