to keep my eye on things while you're
gone."

"You boys are one crowd of true blues, all right. There ain't a city
salesman comes out here I wouldn't trust to the limit."

"You just try me out."

"Why, just to show you how a woman don't know many real friends she has
got, why--even Mark Haas, of the Mound City Silk Company, a firm I don't
do two hundred dollars' worth of business with a year, I wish you could
have heard him the other night at the Y. M. H. A., a man you know for
yourself just comes here to be sociable with the trade."

"Fine fellow, Mark Haas!"

"'When the time comes, Mrs. Coblenz,' he says, 'that you want to make
that trip, just you let me know. Before the war there wasn't a year I
didn't cross the water twice, maybe three times, for the firm. I don't
know there's much I can do; it ain't so easy to arrange for Russia, but,
just the same, you let me know when you're ready to make that trip.'
Just like that he said it. That from Mark Haas!"

"And a man like Haas don't talk that way if he don't mean it."

"Mind you, not a hundred dollars a year business with him. I haven't got
the demands for silks."

"That wash silk I'm telling you about though, Mrs. C., does up like a--"

"There's ma thumping with the poker on the upstairs floor. When it's
closing-time, she begins to get restless. I--I wish Selene would come
in. She went out with Lester Goldmark in his little flivver, and I get
nervous about automobiles."

Mr. Bauer slid an open-face watch from his waistcoat.

"Good Lord, five-forty, and I've just got time to sell the Maplehurst
Emporium a bill of goods!"

"Good-night, Milt; and mind you put up that order of assorted neckwear
yourself. Greens in ready-tieds are good sellers for this time of the
year, and put in some reds and purples for the teamsters."

"No sooner said than done."

"And come out for supper some Sunday night, Milt. It does mamma good to
have young people around."

"I'm yours."

"Good-night, Milt."

He reached across the counter, placing his hand over hers.

"Good-night, Mrs. C.," he said, a note lower in his throat; "and
remember, that call-on-me stuff wasn't just conversation."

"Good-night, Milt," said Mrs. Coblenz, a coating of husk over her own
voice and sliding her hand out from beneath, to top his. "You--you're
all right!"

* * *

Upstairs, in a too tufted and too crowded room directly over the frontal
half of the store, the window overlooking the remote