which she instantly put from her mind.

After hanging the mysterious cape in a secluded corner, she hunted out her sales-book and plunged into her work. Even a sales-book of soiled red leather may be entrusted with a mystery. This she was to learn soon enough.

Such an afternoon as it proved to be! She had need enough for that robust strength of hers. Saturday afternoon it was—two weeks before Christmas. As the clock struck the noon hour the great office buildings poured forth people like a molten stream. Bosses, bookkeepers, stenographers, sales-managers, office boys, every type of man, woman and overgrown child flooded the great stores. Mingling with these were the thousands upon thousands of school children, teachers, and parents, all free for an afternoon of pleasure.

A doubtful sort of pleasure, this. Jostling elbow to elbow, trampling and being trampled upon, snatching here, snatching there, taking up goods and tossing them down in the wrong place, they fought their way about. The toy department, candy department, children’s book department—these were the spots where the great waves of humanity broke most fiercely. Crowded between a fat woman with a muff and a slim man with a grouch, Lucile wrote a sale for a tired looking little lady with two small children. In the meantime an important appearing woman in tight fitting kid gloves was insisting that Lucile had promised to “wait upon” her next. As a matter of fact Lucile had not seen her until that very moment, and had actually promised to sell a large book to a small person who was in a hurry to catch a train.

“Catch a train!” Lucile exclaimed to the checking girl. “There must be a train leaving every two minutes. They’re all catching trains.”

So, crowded, pushed and jostled about, answering a hundred reasonable questions and two hundred unreasonable ones every hour; smiling when a smile would come, wondering in a vague sort of way what it was all about, catching the chance remark of a customer about “Christmas spirit,” Lucile fought her way through the long day.

Then at last, a half hour before closing time, there came the lull. Blessed lull! Almost as abruptly as it had come, the flood ebbed away. Here and there a little group of people moved slowly away; and here someone argued over a long forgotten book or hurried in to snatch up a book and demand instant attention. But in the main the flood-tide had spent itself.

Creeping back into a dark corner and seating herself upon the floor, Lucile added up her sales and then returned to assist in straightening up the tables which had taken on the appearance of a chip yard.

“People have a wonderful respect for books,” she murmured to Laurie.

“Yes, a lot of respect for the one they buy,” smiled Laurie. “They’ll wreck a half dozen of them to find a spotless copy for their own purchasing.”

“Yes, they do that, but just think what a shock to dear Rollo or Algernon if he should receive a book with a slightly torn jacket-cover for a Christmas present!”

“That would be a shock to his nervous system,” laughed Laurie.

For a time they worked on in silence. Lucile put all the Century classics in order and filled the gaps left by the frenzied purchasers. Laurie, working by her side, held up a book.

“There,” he said, “is a title for you.”

She read the title: “The Hope for Happiness.”

“Why should one hope for it when they may really have it?” Laurie exclaimed.

“May one have happiness?” Lucile asked.

“Surely one may! Why if one—”

Lucile turned to find a customer at her elbow.

“Will you sell me this?”

The customer, a lady, thrust a copy of Pinocchio into her hand.

“Cash?”

“Yes. I’ll take it with me, please.”

There was a sweet mellowness in the voice.

Without glancing up, Lucile set her nimble fingers to writing the sale. As she wrote, almost automatically, she chanced to glance at the customer’s hands.

One’s hands may be as distinctive and tell as much of character as one’s face. It was so with these hands. Lucile had never seen such fingers. Long, slim, tapering, yet hard and muscular, they were such fingers as might belong to a musician or a pickpocket. Lucile felt she would always remember those hands as easily as she might recall the face of some other person. As if to make doubly sure that she might not forget, on the forefinger of the right hand was a ring of cunning and marvelous design; a dragon wrought in gold, with eyes of diamonds and a tongue of ten tiny rubies. No American craftsmanship, this, but Oriental, Indian or Japanese.

Without lifting her eyes, Lucile received the money, carried her book to the wrapper and delivered the package to the purchaser. Then she returned to her task of putting things to rights.

Scarcely a moment had elapsed when, on glancing toward her cash book which lay open on a pile of books, she started in surprise.

There could be no mistaking it. From it there came a flash of crimson. Imagine her surprise when she found that the top page of her book had been twice pierced by a needle and that a crimson thread had been drawn through and knotted there in exactly the same manner as had that other bit of thread on the blue cape.

It required but a glance to assure her that through this thread there ran the single strand of purple. The next instant she was dashing down the aisle, hoping against hope that she might catch a glimpse of the mystery woman with the extraordinary fingers and the strange ring.

In this she failed. The woman had vanished.

“And to think,” she exclaimed in exasperation, “to think that I did not look at her face! Such a foolish way as we do get into—paying no attention to our customers! If I had but looked at her face I would have known. Then I would have demanded the truth. I would have—” she paused to reflect, “well, perhaps I shouldn’t have said so much to her, but I would have known her better. And now she is gone!”

But there was yet work to be done. Drawing herself together with an effort, she hurried back to her table where the disorderly pile of books lay waiting to be rearranged.

“Speaking of happiness,” said Laurie, for all the world as if their conversation had not been interrupted, “I don’t see much use of writing a book on the hope for happiness when one may be happy right here and now. Oh, I know there are those who sing: