r liked her less.

Vaguely conscious that she was not "making a hit," and more than ever
angry with the hateful necessity for this excursion, which was to
blame for everything, Ena rambled on, "hoping he wouldn't
misunderstand," and floundering into half explanations which made the
situation less comfortable every minute. At last, when the subject was
torn to tatters, and Raygan had begun to betray impatience, she got up
to go.

"Petro and Lady Eileen will be waiting for us in the jewellery
department now, I expect," Ena said drearily. "Let's hurry and meet
them, and then we can get away. I'm bored to death with the stuffy old
place, and you must be, too. I can't bear anything commercial. If
there's a lovely concert or a tango tea somewhere to finish up the
afternoon, it will be nice. Or almost anything!"

There was a tango tea, and it was nice. Rags, however was far from
nice. He did not seem at all himself.

"I'm afraid the poor old store wasn't as much fun as you thought it
would be," said Petro, half apologetically, when he began to realize
that Rags had a "grouch." Petro had liked the plan to visit the Hands,
and had liked the visit, too. The place had seemed a beehive of
industry and the bees--selling bees and buying bees--had all looked
happy and prosperous enough. On the surface, dad's methods appeared to
be the right methods. But Peter wondered if it would be a betrayal of
his promise if he wandered through the store alone sometimes, when it
was less crowded and things more normal. He had surrendered his
conviction that he "ought to help," and as Peter senior had stipulated
for no interference if Peter junior truly trusted him, one must be
careful about interpretations.

Petro's ideas for a "Start in Life Fund" were occupying a great deal
of his attention and were crystallizing into concrete form. He hoped
that he might soon cease to be a drone, and end by being of some real
use in the world. But as Peter junior passed out of the shop, his
promise to keep "hands off the Hands" seemed one of the things to
regret, whether selfishly or otherwise. He would have liked to know
more of the place, so passionately interesting to him, apart from its
business side; and he was unable to understand how Raygan, the one
whose curiosity had drawn all four to the Hands that day, could have
managed to be bored.

"Blouses" pulsed with excitement. Miss Ena Rolls and her brother were
said to be "showing their father's shop