except Sat'days, when the store was open evenings till the last possible customer had gone home to bed. Mrs. Larrabee apologized to Heaven for doubting its watchfulness, commended Asaph Shillaber to its attention, and bespoke for him a special invoice of blessings.

And Asaph went home to his midday dinner as cheerfully as if he had received them. First he announced the good word about Meldrum's leniency, which Josie greeted with:

"You see! I told you that the party would be the proper caper. Maybe after this you'll believe that your wife knows a thing or two."

Asaph assured her that he would never doubt that she knew at least that much. Then, like the wag he was, he said that he had added a new clerk to his staff–a lady and a beauty, whose charms would draw no end of custom to the store and dazzle the drummers from far and near.

Josie's facile temper flashed at once into glow. One of her chief interests in the Bazar had been to make sure that it never harbored any saleswoman whose beauty could possibly lure her husband's mind from his ledgers or his home ties. Under the pretext of purchases or suggestions she made frequent tours of inspection, and if a girl too young or a pair of eyes too bright gleamed behind a counter Asaph heard of it at once. Some years before he had bowed to the inevitable and made it a rule to engage no woman who could imaginably disturb Josie's delicate equipoise.

Meldrum had noticed the strange array and had been inclined to impute the decline of the store's prosperity to the appearance of its staff.

"Good Lord, Ase!" he had groaned. "What you got here–the overflow of the Home for Aged and Indignant Females? You've collected a bunch of clock-stoppers that makes a suffragette meeting look like a Winter Garden chorus. People like those can't sell pretty things. Send 'em all to the bone-yard and get in some winners."

Asaph promised, and Meldrum promised to arrange an extension of credit. But Asaph would have feared bankruptcy less than such a step. As soon as Meldrum was gone he put the cap-sheaf to his little army of relicts and remnants by engaging Debby Larrabee! She made the rest look handsome by contrast.

She was the joke that he tried to spring on his wife. Josie took the allusion seriously, and Asaph was soon trying to hold her down.

"Wait! Wait till you hear who it is!" he pleaded; but she stormed on:

"I don't care who it is. I'm not going to have you exposed to the wiles of any of those designing minxes. I won't have her, I tell you."

At length he shouted above the din: "I was only joking. It's Debby Larrabee! I've engaged Debby Larrabee! They've lost all their money."

When Josie understood, she saw the joke. She began to laugh with hysterics, to slap and push her husband about hilariously. "Aw, you old fraud, you! So you've engaged Dubby Debby! Well, you can keep her. I don't care how late you stay at the store as long as Debby's there."

Deborah was fortunate enough not to overhear this. In fact, the long drought in Debby's good luck seemed to be ending. The skies over her grew dark with the abundance of merciful rain. A gentle drizzle preceded the cloudburst. There usually is a deluge after a drought.

A few days later found Debby installed in the washable silks. The change in her environment was complete. Instead of dozing through a nightmare of ineptitude in the doleful society of her old mother in a dismal home where almost nobody ever called, and never a man, now she stood all day on the edge of a stream of people; she chattered breezily all day to women in search of beautiful fabrics. She handled beautiful fabrics. Her conversation was a procession of adjectives of praise.

Trying to live up to her surroundings, she took thought of her appearance. Dealing in fashions, with fashion-plates as her scriptures, she tried to get in touch with the contemporary styles. She bounded across eight or ten periods at one leap. First she found that she could at least put up her hair as other women did. The revolution in her appearance was amazing. Next she retrimmed her old hat, reshaped her old skirt–drew it so tightly about her ankles that she was forced to the tremendous deed of slitting it up a few inches so that she could at least walk slowly. The first time her mother noticed it she said:

"Why, Debby, what on earth! That skirt of yours is all tore up the side."

Debby explained it to her with the delicious confusion of a Magdalen confessing her entry upon a career of profligacy. Her mother almost fainted. Debby had gone wrong at this late day! She had heard that department-stores were awful places for a girl. The papers had been full of minimum wages and things.

Worse yet, Debby began to attitudinize, to learn the comfort of poses. She must be forever holding pretty things forward. She took care of her hands, polished her nails. Now and then she must drape a piece of silk across her shoulder and dispose her rigid frame into curves. She began to talk of "lines" to cold-cream her complexion.

The mental change in her was no less thorough. Activity was a tonic. Her patience was compelled to school itself. Prosperity lay in unfaltering courtesy, untarnished cheer. Cynicism does not sell goods. All day long she was praising things. Enthusiasm became her instinct.

Few men swam into her ken, but in learning to satisfy the exactions of women she built up tact. She had long since omitted malekind from her life and her plan of life. She was content. Women liked her; women lingered to talk with her; they asked her help in their vital struggle for beauty. It was enough.