WINNIE CHILDS

THE SHOP GIRL

BY

C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

1914, 1916, by C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I   THE DRYAD DOOR
CHAPTER II   BALM OF GILEAD
CHAPTER III   AN ILL WIND
CHAPTER IV   THE KINDNESS OF MISS ROLLS
CHAPTER V   SCENES FOR A "MOVIE"
CHAPTER VI   THE HANDS WITH THE RINGS
CHAPTER VII   THE TWO PETERS
CHAPTER VIII   No. 2884
CHAPTER IX   THE TEST OF CHARACTER
CHAPTER X   PETER ROLLS'S LITTLE WAYS
CHAPTER XI   DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST
CHAPTER XII   BLUE PETER
CHAPTER XIII   ONE MAN AND ANOTHER
CHAPTER XIV   FROM SCYLLA TO CHARYBDIS
CHAPTER XV   THE LADY IN THE MOON
CHAPTER XVI   THE SEED ENA PLANTED
CHAPTER XVII   TOYLAND
CHAPTER XVIII   THE BIG BLUFF
CHAPTER XIX   "YES" TO ANYTHING
CHAPTER XX   THE CLOSED HOUSE
CHAPTER XXI   THE TELEPHONE
CHAPTER XXII   THE FRAGRANCE OF FRESIAS
CHAPTER XXIII   MOTHER
CHAPTER XXIV   THINGS EXPLODING
CHAPTER XXV   A PIECE OF HER MIND
CHAPTER XXVI   WHEN THE SECRET CAME OUT
CHAPTER XXVII   THE BATTLE

THE SHOP GIRL

THE SHOP GIRL

CHAPTER I

THE DRYAD DOOR

It was a horrible day at sea, horrible even on board the new and splendid Monarchic. All the prettiest people had disappeared from the huge dining-saloon. They had turned green, and then faded away, one by one or in hurried groups; and now the very thought of music at meals made them sick, in ragtime.

Peter Rolls was never sick in any time or in any weather, which was his one disagreeable, superior-to-others trick. Most of his qualities were likable, and he was likable, though a queer fellow in some ways, said his best friends—the ones who called him "Petro." When the ship played that she was a hobby-horse or a crab (if that is the creature which shares with elderly Germans a specialty for walking from side to side), also a kangaroo, and occasionally a boomerang, Peter Rolls did not mind.

He was sorry for the men and girls he knew, including his sister, who lay in deck chairs pretending to be rugs, or who went to bed and wished themselves in their peaceful graves. But for himself, the wild turmoil of the waves filled him with sympathetic restlessness. It had never occurred to Peter that he was imaginative, yet he seemed

to know what the white-faced storm was saying, and to want to shout an answer.

The second morning out (the morning after the Monarchic had to pass Queenstown without taking on the mails or putting off enraged passengers) Peter thought he would go to the gymnasium and work up an appetite for luncheon. He had looked in the first day, and had seen a thing which could give you all the sensations and benefits of a camel ride across the desert. He had ridden camels in real deserts and liked them. Now he did not see why waves should not answer just as well as dunes, and was looking forward to the experiment; but he must have been absent-minded, for when he opened what ought to have been the gymnasium door, it was not the gymnasium door. It was—good heavens!—what was it?

Peter Rolls, the unimaginative young man, thought that he must be in his berth and dreaming he was here. For this room that he was looking into could not possibly be a room on a ship, not even on the Monarchic, that had all the latest, day-after-to-morrow improvements and luxuries. The