onze
street shoes. Louie took the next elevator up. The shoe display had
made him feel as though some one from home had slapped him on the back.

The God of the Jobless was with him. The boss had fired two boys the day
before.

"Oskaloosa!" grinned the boss, derisively. "Do they wear shoes there?
What do you know about shoes, huh boy?"

Louie told him. The boss shuffled the papers on his desk, and chewed his
cigar, and tried not to show his surprise. Louie, quite innocently, was
teaching the boss things about the shoe business.

When Louie had finished--"Well, I try you, anyhow," the boss grunted,
grudgingly. "I give you so-and-so much." He named a wage that would
have been ridiculous if it had not been so pathetic.

"All right, sir," answered Louie, promptly, like the boys in the Alger
series. The cost of living problem had never bothered Louie in Oskaloosa.

The boss hid a pleased smile.

"Miss Epstein!" he bellowed, "step this way! Miss Epstein, kindly show
this here young man so he gets a line on the stock. He is from
Oskaloosa, Ioway. Look out she don't sell you a gold brick, Louie."

But Louie was not listening. He was gazing at the V in Sophy Epstein's
dress with all his scandalized Oskaloosa, Iowa, eyes.

Louie was no mollycoddle. But he had been in great demand as usher at
the Young Men's Sunday Evening Club service at the Congregational church,
and in his town there had been no Sophy Epsteins in too-tight princess
dresses, cut into a careless V. But Sophy was a city product--I was
about to say pure and simple, but I will not--wise, bold, young, old,
underfed, overworked, and triumphantly pretty.

"How-do!" cooed Sophy in her best baby tones. Louie's disapproving eyes
jumped from the objectionable V in Sophy's dress to the lure of Sophy's
face, and their expression underwent a lightning change. There was no
disapproving Sophy's face, no matter how long one had dwelt in Oskaloosa.

"I won't bite you," said Sophy. "I'm never vicious on Tuesdays. We'll
start here with the misses' an' children's, and work over to the other
side."

Whereupon Louie was introduced into the intricacies of the sample shoe
business. He kept his eyes resolutely away from the V, and learned many
things. He learned how shoes that look like six dollar values may be
sold for two-fifty. He looked on in wide-eyed horror while Sophy fitted
a No. 5 C shoe on a 6 B foot and assured the wearer that it looked like