"I want a book--for--a--boy," he reiterated distinctly; and this time
the girl flicked her ear as at the singing of an annoying insect.

"Juveniles three aisles over to your left," she snapped glibly; and
after a puzzled pondering on her words, Jasper concluded that they were
meant for him.

In the juvenile department, Jasper wondered why every one in the store
had chosen that particular minute to come there and buy a book for a
child. Everywhere were haste and confusion. Nowhere was there any one
who paid the least attention to himself. At his right a pretty girl
chatted fluently of this, that, and another "series"; and at his left a
severe-faced woman with glasses discoursed on the great responsibility
of selecting reading for the young, and uttered fearsome prophecies of
the dire evil that was sure to result from indiscriminate buying.

Her words were not meant for Jasper's ears, but they reached them,
nevertheless. The man shuddered and grew pale. With soft steps he
slunk out of the book department. . . . To think that he--_he_, who
knew nothing whatever about books for boys--had nearly bought one of
the risky things for Jimmy! And to Jasper's perverted imagination it
almost seemed that Jimmy, white-faced and sad-eyed, had already gone
wrong--and through him.

Jasper looked at his watch then, and decided it was time for luncheon.
After that he could look around for something else for Jimmy.

It was six o'clock when Jasper, flushed, tired, and anxious, looked at
his watch again, and took account of stock.

He had a string of beads and a pair of skates.

The skates, of course, were for Jimmy. He was pleased with those. It
was a girl who had helped him in that decision--a very obliging girl
who had found him in the toy department confusedly eyeing an array of
flaxen-haired dolls, and who had gently asked him the age of the boy
for whom he desired a present. He thought of that girl now with
gratitude.

The string of beads did not so well please him. He was a little
doubtful, anyway, how he happened to buy them. He had a dim
recollection that they looked wonderfully pretty with the light
bringing out sparkles of green and gold, and that the girl who tended
them did not happen to have anything to do but to wait on him. So he
had bought them. They were handsome beads, and not at all cheap. They
would do for some one, he assured himself. And not until he had
dropped them in his pocket did it occur t