don't get
stoop-shouldered carrying 'em around."

"Hold on a minute," commanded Gus. "This thing is uncanny. Our cases
dovetail like the deductions in a detective story. Kneel here at my
feet, little daughter, and I'll tell you the story of my sad young life.
I'm no child of the city streets, either. Say, I came to this town
because I thought there was a bigger field for me in Gents' Furnishings.
Joke, what?"

But Gertie didn't smile. She gazed up at Gus, and Gus gazed down at her,
and his fingers fiddled absently with the big bow at the end of her braid.

"And isn't there?" asked Gertie, sympathetically.

"Girlie, I haven't saved twelve dollars since I came. I'm no tightwad,
and I don't believe in packing everything away into a white marble
mausoleum, but still a gink kind of whispers to himself that some day
he'll be furnishing up a kitchen pantry of his own."

"Oh!" said Gertie.

"And let me mention in passing," continued Gus, winding the ribbon bow
around his finger, "that in the last hour or so that whisper has been
swelling to a shout."

"Oh!" said Gertie again.

"You said it. But I couldn't buy a secondhand gas stove with what I've
saved in the last half-year here. Back home they used to think I was a
regular little village John Drew, I was so dressy. But here I look like
a yokel on circus day compared to the other fellows in the store. All
they need is a field glass strung over their shoulder to make them look
like a clothing ad in the back of a popular magazine. Say, girlie,
you've got the prettiest hair I've seen since I blew in here. Look at
that braid! Thick as a rope! That's no relation to the piles of jute
that the Flossies here stack on their heads. And shines! Like satin."

"It ought to," said Gertrude, wearily. "I brush it a hundred strokes
every night. Sometimes I'm so beat that I fall asleep with my brush in
the air. The manager won't stand for any romping curls or hooks-and-eyes
that don't connect. It keeps me so busy being beautiful, and what the
society writers call 'well groomed,' that I don't have time to sew the
buttons on my underclothes."

"But don't you get some amusement in the evening?" marveled Gus. "What
was the matter with you and the other girls in the store? Can't you hit
it off?"

"Me? No. I guess I was too woodsy for them. I went out with them a
couple of times. I guess they're nice girls all right; but they've got
what you call a broader way o