you'll take my advice you'll keep her strictly out of this store. She'll want to run the whole place, just as she did when Stephen was in here."

Samuel fairly gasped. A woman right in the store all the time. What could his sister Mary be thinking of! He should threaten to leave that very night and go back to the construction gang.

A flutter of calico and Mrs. Burr was gone; but no sooner was this agony over for Samuel than a flutter of blue serge announced another more serious than the first.

She was little and plumn, with dimples, and rings of brown hair framing her face. Her jacket and gloves were mousecolored, and Samuel thanked heaven that the delivery boy was still at the back door loading up.

He slipped out and sent the boy in to wait upon her.

"Just-er-tell her we haven't got what she wants," said Samuel hurriedly. "Send her over to Snyder's across the street, or-er-ask her if she hasn't a telephone."

Then he finished getting the load into the wagon, rubbed the horse's nose, and when the boy came out asked easily if she had gone.

"Gone? naw!" responded the boy; "that's Georgie Hooker, and she says she's goin' to stay."

Samuel was completely overcome. He leaned up against the horse until the boy drove off; then he leaned against the back door and thought about going in, and dreaded it.

He was almost sure his sister Mary would cry when he told her that he meant to rejoin the construction gang at once. But he must go. He could not stay in a grocery store with something he afraid to meet at every turn.

was

When he had staid out by the back door as long as he dared, he went in. Mrs. Hooker was selling something to woman who had harried the life out of him the day before without buying anything. He heard money jingle, and knew that Mrs. Hooker had accomplished that which had been too difficult for him. There was a faint odor of violets, and something soft touched Samuel's ear as he hovered inside the wire railing which surrounded the desk. It was the sleeve

of a dove-colored jacket, and Samuel jumped as if it had scorched him. He wondered how he was ever going to stand it!

When Mrs. Hooker came to the back of the store she merely nodded and smiled, and showed all her teeth, which were strong, and even, and good to look at.

Your sister Mary thought I might be of some use to you for awhile until you get started," she explained. "I kept Mr. Stephen Alzer's books, you know, and am somewhat used to the store," and after that she said no more, but settled down to work.

The next morning she was on time to the minute, smiled, dimpled, hung up her little dove-colored jacket, and began just where she left off the day before.

Samuel spent most of the day out among the barrels in the back yard, and at night had a solemn interview with his sister Mary.

66

"I won't stand it," he declared. When you wrote that Stephen was sick, and you wanted me to help in the store I dropped my work and came right away."

"I know you did, and it was awfully good of you, Samuel."

"But I never dreamed of anything like this. I supposed a boy would wait on the customers, and that I should unpack boxes and keep books in the back of the store. Instead of which there is a woman right there in the store all the time." Mary Alzer smoothed her apron with a knotted hand, and sighed.

as

"She was a great help to Stephen," she said, "and she has been a wonderful help to me. When she and her husband first came to board with us, he was on the road most of the time. He was traveling for candy and crackers then. Afterwards he went into lard and spices. He was away a good deal, and Georgie took right hold of the work here though she had been one of the family. She helped Stephen in the store-why, he got so along at the last that he just depended on her-and she nursed me through that spell of rheumatism like an old woman. I always dreaded seeing Hooker come home. He used to find fault with his wife for being in the store. He said it was altogether too cheap-to

have his wife clerking in a grocery store. I can't say that I ever liked Hooker, but Georgie is an awful nice, helpful little woman."

"She may be all that," assented Stephen, "and I don't doubt that she is, but I don't want her in the store!"

Mary Alzer sighed again. "Well, you will have to tell her to go, then." "Mary, you got her in there; you ought to be the one to get her out."

Mary shook her head obstinately. "I couldn't hurt her feelings that way, Samuel, after all she has done for me. It would be different with you. You ain't under any obligations to her, and if you don't want her, just tell her so kindly and she'll get out. Georgie Hooker ain't the woman to stay where she is a hindrance instead of a help."

Mary Alzer watched her brother out of sight on his way to the grocery, and a wicked smile played round her gentle old mouth.

"He'll tell her to get out-he willin a horn!"

When Samuel arrived at the back door of the grocery he heard a strident female voice demanding to see him at once. He slipped behind the screen which surrounded the desk. He could have faced a Russian army with more fortitude than he could have confronted a woman in that state of mind.

"I want to see Mr. Alzer!" demanded the voice, which Samuel recognized as belonging to Mrs. Burr.

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I am here to wait upon customers," Mrs. Hooker repeated quietly.

"I won't trade with clerks! I allers trade with the proprietor!"

66

But I am here to wait upon lady cus tomers."

"I ain't goin' to pav you no twenty five cents a dozen for roastin' ears, nor thirty cents a pound for butter!"

"Cheap at that, Mrs. Burr."

"I won't do it, Georgie Hooker, and you needn't think it! Where's Mr. Alzer ?"

"Mr. Alzer is busy, and I am here to wait upon lady customers."

"If Mr. Alzer ain't got time to wait on his old customers, then his old customers ain't got time for him! I'm goin' over to Snyder's to git mv butter an' roastin' ears!"

"Verv well. Here is vour basket, Mrs. Burr. Pleasant day for fall, isn't it?"

Mrs. Burr disdained to express an opinion about the weather. She took her basket with a jerk and marched as far as the front door. She knew that Snyder charged twenty-five cents for roastin' ears, and thirty for butter that tasted like preserved fish.

See here," she said, with her hand on the latch, "I'll give you fifteen cents a dozen for roastin' ears, an' I won't give you a cent more! Alzer threw in a dozen for nothin' last time I bought 'em."

"Then I ought to charge extra to make up the loss on the dozen which he gave you," said Mrs. Hooker decidedly. "In corn, you know, we have to make both ends meet."

"Say," said Mrs. Burr, "how long vou goin' to stay in this store?"

"Always. Is that all you wish this morning? Here is Mrs. Mackintosh; I must wait upon her."

Later both of the ladies left the store with their baskets. full of supplies which had been paid for at a rate which left an honest profit for the grocery.

Samuel heaved a sigh of relief, and although he spent most of the day in the back yard, he could not help feeling deeply grateful towards his clerk for the sense of relief he experienced in being able to shift the responsibility of Mrs. Burr and others of her kind to shoulders more able to bear it.

As the assets of the business began steadily to gain upon the liabilities, in spite of himself his gratitude to his clerk grew in proportion. He was still afraid of her, but he began to depend upon her as a child depends upon its mother.

One day she inquired if he had seen a stray glove anywhere about.

"It was a gray glove," she explained. but the description was superfluous. Did he not know the color-those adorable little gray gloves which covered such adorable, dimpled, helpful hands?

Later in the day he found the lost glove in a box of waste papers, and picked it out with reverent fingers. It lay in the palm of his trembling hand, soft, mousecolored, slightly perfumed. The touch of it thrilled him and chilled him by turns. He stood gazing upon it for fully five minutes, then fearfully, guiltily, he

pressed it to his lips and felt the next moment that he deserved eternal damnation.

"A married woman!" he groaned. "A respectable married woman! It's an insult to her, although she doesn't know it! What a miserable wretch I am! And after all she has done for me!"

"I found my glove under the stool at the desk," announced Mrs. Hooker as she was leaving the store that night. "Queer that I should sweep all round it and never see it. It shows what an expert I am with the broom, doesn't it?"

All the comment Samuel made was, "Humph!"

One day the proprietor of the grocery store discovered that he had contracted a habit. It had been a matter of pride with Samuel that although he had passed a good share of his life among rough men who swore, and drank, and chewed, and smoked, he did none of these things. A man, Samuel argued, who was weak

enough to allow a habit to master him was just no man at all. And now, without realizing it, he had contracted a habit on his own account; one which, when he stopped to consider, he knew must become very injurious if allowed to go on. Every morning when he entered the back door of the grocery and skirted the partition which enclosed the desk, he lifted his hand as if by accident and brushed it across the mouse-colored jacket which hung there, and which had scorched his ear with a touch that first day. The feel of the soft material gave him a sensation the like of which he had never experienced before. The faint odor of violet floating out at his touch stimulated him like wine, remaining with him even while he unpacked a keg of smoked herring, or installed a fresh cheese in its wire case.

When Samuel came to realize the hold this cloak habit had obtained upon him he shuddered, and resolved to exercise some of the will power in freeing himself from it which he had recommended to his mates back in the construction-gang days.

For three days he abstained, and then eraved an indulgence in the familiar dissipation so strongly that, like other drunkards, he was suddenly swept into a perfect maelstrom of sin.

Mrs. Hooker was out at the front door telling Mrs. Mackintosh the difference between the ten-cent cantaloups and thos at fifteen cents. Henry, the boy, was wabbling off with a belated 'phone order. Samuel was alone with the jacket. He slipped an arm beneath and buried his face in its folds.

For one mad moment his soul was drunk with the odor of violet, intermingled with that still more subtle fragrance of femininity common to the garments of dainty women; then he tottered in and climbed upon the stool where Mrs. Hooker found him a moment later frowning darkly over an entry which she had made, and which he pretended he could not understand.

"I must get rid of her," he groaned. "This will never do! Her poor husband who has gone into lard and spices is off on his legitimate business, while another miscreant actually puts his arm around her jacket. Oh, it is devilish! I thought I was an honest man! I sneered at Jake Sanbourne because he said he was too far gone to stop boozing! What were Jake's gentle jags compared to smooching the jacket of another man's wife! Horrors! Sam Alzer! You! Another man's wife! And a mighty heartless woman, too, or why doesn't she ever mention her husband? Why doesn't she ever quote prices on lard and spices-poetry, by jingo I am in danger! Why doesn't she try to get an order here for her husband? It's awful hard to handle lardthere it is poetry again-that woman must go!"

He laid a hand heavily upon the desk, and it rested upon something soft and pliant. It was a glove again. One of those dangerous, perfumey, mouse-colored gloves. He crushed it to his lips, to his cheek, to his lips again, then flung it to the floor and ground his heel upon it.

As he stamped out of the enclosure he met Mrs. Hooker coming in.

The meeting was entirely unexpected on both sides. He had not seen her approach, and she was under the impression that he was out.

He stenned hastily to one side with a brow of thunder.

With the usual perversity of inanimate things, the woman's black silk watch cord coiled about the man's coat button,

jerked taut, hauled out the foolish little watch, then snapped free of its mission, allowing the little watch to go bang on the floor where, after the lid had popped open, it rolled away under the remotest corner of the desk.

Alzer went down upon his hands and knees to recover the watch, while Mrs. Hooker stood blushing and tittering, and trembling forth apologies. Mr. Alzer had been so awfully cross of late, and had shown so many symptoms of dissatisfaction with her work that she had begun to be a little afraid of him and was more than half resolved to take herself out of his way for good.

Samuel came up presently, with the watch open in his hand. From the inside of the cover the picture of a man looked out; a man with flabby chops and an Edward-the-Seventh beard.

"Is that your husband's picture?" he demanded sternly of the woman.

She nodded and received the watch, murmuring thanks for its recovery, while Samuel hurried out to the back room where the empty boxes were stored.

Here he sorted out the six boxes which had contained the brand of soap known as "His Majesty's." Upon the side of each box was a cut of the head of the King of England, which resembled the picture in the cover of Mrs. Hooker's watch.

h

Samuel set the six royal gentlemen up in a row and then deliberately kicked them all to pieces. When he had finished. it looked very much as if the back room of the grocery had been struck by lightning.

Mrs.

"I want to speak to you to-night before you go home," he announced to Hooker, and his glance was so threatening that the poor plump little woman fairly quailed; after which he went in search of another empty box. The demolition of those Edward-the-Seventh countenances seemed to afford the greatest relief to his pent-up passion and jealousy.

That night, while Henry brought in the orange boxes and proceeded to close store, Samuel mounted the stool in the desk cage and screwed himself up to do the deed upon which he had decided.

Mrs. Hooker put on the offending jacket and adjusted her turban and veil.

Lastly, she drew on those wicked little gloves and stood before Samuel to receive her sentence. There were dark

rings about her eyes and a pathetic droop

to the corners of her mouth.

Alzer eyed her sternly almost fiercely. "Mrs. Hooker," he said, "I have decided to get along without you."

Mrs. Hooker bowed, but remained silent, and her lips twitched like those of a child who has been hurt.

Alzer drew a deep, painful breath and thrust her wages towards her. He had computed them with great care, and afterwards added a goodly bank note.

She extended a plump gray glove, and the touch of it as the money changed hands was more disturbing than when it was empty.

She carefully sorted out the bill and laid it on the desk, and as she spoke, her lips still trembled, as did her voice.

"Thank you, Mr. Alzer. Would you mind telling me wherein I have failed please vou? It-it might help me to know what to avoid in case-I am fortunate enough to get another situation."

She met his glance squarely now, but her eyes were brimming with tears, and her lips were nitiful in their pucker of pain.

Un at the front of the store Henry was murdering "Hiawatha," and the discord was dripping in upon Samuel's soul in drops of red hot misery.

woman.

"I am a very unfortunate Mr. Alzer. I always try to do my best, but never seem to succeed in pleasing anvbody-not even my husband. He admired showv women-good dressers, as he called them, and I never was that. Well, I must tr somewhere else, I suppose. I have got to earn my living somewhere. This store seemed like home to me I got so used to it while your brother was here-and since"

"Good God, woman, are you so dense? Don't you know that you leased me too well? Can't you see that I am a fool and a-a devil? That I am in love with another man's wife? A man who is off minding his own business in lard and spices? That is what your husband is in, isn't it-lard and spices?"

"I don't know, Mr. Alzer. He has been dead two years and over."