"Any one would think I was a dog and she was a bone," growled Petro. "Speak, indeed! I wish you'd mind your own business, Ena."

"I am minding it as hard as I can," said his sister, "and you ought to thank me for taking an interest in yours, too. Don't you like poor little Lady Eileen?"

"Very much; same way she likes me. We're good chums."

"If you don't believe what I say, Petro, there's a splendid way of finding out. Ask her."

"See here, my dear girl, haven't you got anything better to do this morning than to loll all over my sofa and talk drivel when I want to write a letter blowing up somebody? I felt a fool when you came in. Now you've made me feel a double-dyed idiot. Kindly go away and dig a hole in the ground with yourself."

Ena went. But she felt that, despite discouragement, she had already dug a tiny, tiny hole in very hard ground, not for herself, but for a little seed which might perhaps send out its shoots later.

It did not precisely do that; but as the ground raked over was Petro's heart, the seed his sister had left made him uncomfortable. It burned and stung and felt alive, and something had to be done about it.

Of course Ena was wrong. He was the last fellow in the world a girl could care for. He had learned that to his sorrow. A girl couldn't even like him. There was something about him that bored her nearly to death as soon as she began to know him fairly well, and made her want to bolt. He was as sure, he told himself, of the exact nature of nice little Lady Eileen's feeling for him as of his for her. Nevertheless, that night at a dance, when he and she (for the best of reasons, they didn't know how) were sitting out the tango, he found himself becoming confidential.

This was strange, for Petro had one of his father's characteristics if no other—he did not confide things in people. Peter senior kept his own secrets because it was wise to keep them. Peter junior kept his partly because he thought they would bore every one save himself. So even where the two were alike, they were miles apart. For some vague reason, however—which, if he had stopped to define it, would have convinced him that he was disgustingly conceited—Petro was moved that night, in a new-fashioned conservatory resembling a jungle, to tell Lady Eileen one or two things about himself.

How it started he was not quite sure, but with some awkwardness he had tried to lead up to the subject, and suddenly Eileen had begun to help him out.

"I used to think a man would have to know a lot about a girl," he said, "before he could be sure she was the sort he could fall in love with. I thought love at first sight wouldn't be love at all, but only infatuation. Now I see that I didn't know what I was talking about. It isn't a question of whether you could love her. You've just got to. You can't do anything else. It's like seven devils or seven angels entering into and possessing you. There they are before you know what's happened. Afterward, when you find out what's struck you, maybe it's too late. Or maybe there'd never have been any hope, anyhow."

"'While there's life, there's hope,'" quoted Eileen.

"But what if life's parted you from her?"

"I wouldn't let it, if I were a man. I wouldn't allow the girl to go out of my life. It doesn't sound a strong thing to do."

"It might be, though, in some circumstances. For instance, if a girl showed you very plainly she couldn't be bothered with you, it would be weak to run after her, wouldn't it?"

"I wonder," said Eileen, "if a man's a good judge of why a girl does things that she does? Of course, I don't know much. But I feel he mightn't be. It's so difficult for girls and men to understand each other, really. Now there's my brother Rags and our cousin Pobbles—I mean, Portia. Pobbles is her nickname. You know we're great on the most endlessly quaint nicknames in our family. She's quite a distant cousin of ours, otherwise she wouldn't have such lots of money as she has. We're church mice. We'd be church worms if there were any! But Rags was in love with Pobbles for years, and she wouldn't believe it. She thought, because she's not exactly pretty, it must be her money he wanted. They never understood each other a bit. You mustn't say anything about this, and I won't say anything about what you tell me. You will tell me about the girl, won't you? Maybe I can help. You see, though I don't know so very much about men yet—except Rags—I know a whole lot about girls."

"There isn't much to tell," said Petro. "I met a girl in rather a queer way—sort of romantic, it seemed to me. And the minute I saw her she stood out quite different from any one else I'd ever seen, like a red rose in a garden of pale-pink ones. I couldn't get her face out of my mind, or her voice out of my ears. She was like my idea of a dryad. It seemed she might turn into a tree if a man looked at her too long. But I didn't know I was in love. I thought she just appealed to me, fascinated me somehow or other. And I wanted to do things for her all the time. I was always thinking of some excuse to be where she was. I was looking forward to doing a lot more things—I suppose it was only selfishness, because I wanted to make her like me, but I didn't realize that till after she was gone."

"Gone?" Eileen encouraged him.

"Yes. She didn't want me to do those things I'd been planning for her. She wouldn't have what I could do, or me, at any price."

"Did you—had you—told her you cared?"

"Great Scott! no. I hadn't got nearly so far as that. I told her I hoped to see her again, that if there was something I could do to help, I—but she wasn't taking any. She seemed friendly and kind before that, which made it worse when she turned me down so hard. I suppose she hadn't minded much at first, but the more she saw of me the more she couldn't stand for the shape of my nose or the way I talked, maybe. She just got to feel that the sight of me hanging around would poison New York for her, and she intimated that her health would be better if I kept at the other end of the city. You wouldn't have had me continue to butt in, would you?"

"I don't know. What happened then?"

"Oh, she went away."

"You let her go?"

"What else could I do?"

"You could have found out where she went in case she changed her mind. But perhaps you did find out?"

"No. For she didn't seem like the kind of girl who would change her mind about a kind of fellow like me. Besides, I was sort of stunned by the difference in her manner just at the moment. When I came to myself—I mean, about wondering if I could have done anything better, and realizing what a terrible lot I cared, she was gone. Then I hoped Ena would hear from her. I think she promised to write. But it appears that she never did so."

"Is she in New York still?"

"I wish to heaven I knew!"

"Couldn't you find out?"

"I might, if I wanted to be a cad."

"Why—what do you mean?"

"I dare say a private detective would undertake the job. Sometimes I've been tempted—yet no, I don't believe I ever did come near to playing the game as low down as that."

"But it might be for her good—-"

"That's the way I argued with myself. I almost got myself convinced sometimes. But I knew in my heart it was only sophistry. You see, it isn't as if she would let me do anything for her, even if she wanted anything done, which I've no particular reason to suppose she does. She's English, and a stranger over here, but she told me—when we were friends—that she had letters of introduction to good people and that she'd plenty of money till they found her a job. I can't bear to think of her needing a 'job' when I—but I'm helpless! No doubt she's all right, and getting along like a house on fire. She was the sort of girl who would. Or maybe she's engaged by this time to some chap worth ten of me. But I can't forget. I think of her by day, and I dream of her by night."

"What do you see her doing in your dreams?" Eileen asked in a new tone of voice. Not more interested, for she had shown deep interest before, but with a quaver of excited eagerness.

"Dreams go by contraries, luckily," said Peter, "otherwise I should worry. I always see her in some kind of trouble. If it isn't one darned thing it's another. And I look for her by day when I'm up in town. I think, what if I should see her face framed in some car window? This afternoon I even looked for her in our store—though feeling to me the way she did, it would be the last place where she'd go to spend a cent, if she associated the name of Rolls with mine. I bet she'd rather go without a cloak on a cold day than buy it there!"

"Our dance, Lady Eileen," said another man, who had tracked a missing partner through the tropical jungle.

Eileen rose reluctantly, but graciously, throwing Petro a good-bye look. There was a sympathetic, understanding smile on her pleasant, freckled face which seemed to say: "Don't give up. You may find her yet. And girls do change their minds about men. Anyhow, I'm glad we've had this talk."

She was glad, though she was sad, too—just a little sad. It would pass, she knew, for she had not let herself go far. In spite of all that Ena had said, it had never felt true that Peter cared for her. She could have loved him, and been happy with him, and have made him happy, she thought, but since he didn't want her, she must set herself to work hard not to want him. She must take her mind off the little deep-down, bruised hurt in her heart by thinking of a way in which she could make him happy—a way in which, by and by, he might recognize her handiwork and send her his thanks across the sea.

"I should like him to know I did it," she said to herself. "And then through all his life he would have to remember me because of his happiness, which, without me, he might have missed."

Of course, Petro had mentioned no name, and Eileen had asked no questions. If it had not been for Raygan's revelation she might not have guessed; but now she did guess, and was almost sure. It seemed to her that a girl who could have Petro's friendship and then drop it like a hot chestnut didn't deserve him for a friend, much less a lover. But there must have been some reason. It wouldn't have been human nature, to put things on their lowest level, for a girl in Miss Child's position to "turn down" a young man in Peter Rolls's for a mere whim.

Could Ena have done something to put them apart? Eileen wondered. It would—she had to admit—be like Ena. And if Ena had been treacherous or hateful, then it would be a sort of poetical justice if she lost Raygan through making her brother lose his dryad. Even now Eileen did not know what Rags would do; and since their day at the Hands, he had seemed somehow "off" the affair with Ena. But whatever happened in the end—which, one way or the other, must come soon—between Ena and Raygan, Peter mustn't lose the Lady in the Moon because of a stupid promise exacted and made to get his sister out of some scrape.

Eileen wouldn't break the promise, because a promise was one of the few things she and her brother Rags had never broken. Raygan wouldn't release her, even if she begged him to do so, but there might be another way—a way which might lead Petro straight to the Lady in the Moon, if he were really in earnest about finding her. That was the clever part of the inspiration which suddenly came to Eileen that same night after starting up from a dream which was "endlessly quaint."

"I'll do it when I say good-bye to Mrs. Rolls," she told herself. And the idea seemed to her so original, so filled with possibilities of romance, that it was as soothing to the bruise in her heart as an application of Peter Rolls's Balm of Gilead.

She guessed that he had put aside his reserve and told her about the "dryad girl" because Ena had put him up to think that she—Eileen—had "begun to care." The mortifying part was that it had been—almost true. But Eileen wasn't going to mind. She was going to say to herself, if ever the pain came back: "If I can do this for him, surely, when he knows, he'll be glad he told me, and glad that I cared enough to help."

It was only next morning, when the world showed its practical side, that she realized how seldom in real life romances can be worked out to a happy ending—or, at all events, the kind of happy ending the people concerned are striving after.

"I'll do my best, though," she reiterated, "for Petro's sake and for mine."

For her the lost dryad was but a shadowy figure in the background, necessary to the picture, perhaps, yet not of poignant, personal interest. It was only of Petro she thought.



CHAPTER XVII

TOYLAND

From her own point of view, the lost dryad was a prominent figure in the middle of the foreground; for life was strenuous for those in the grasp of the Hands, and it was only at night, when her body could lie quiet while her brain was still terribly active, that other figures assumed their due importance for Win in the great, bright picture of New York.

It was something to be thankful for that she had escaped Peter the day of that visit of inspection to the store. Not that she was afraid of him or anything he could do if they should meet. That would have been too silly and Victorian! Girls were not like that nowadays, if they had any sense, no matter how "dangerous" men might be. But she had liked him so much, and had been so bitterly disappointed to learn from his own loving sister that he was not the "Mr. Balm of Gilead" created by her imagination that it would be unbearable to meet him again, to see him "giving himself away," and thus proving his sister right.

To be sure, after seeing Miss Rolls in the lift, certain kind protestations of friendship had been contradicted by a frozen smile, a cold, embarrassed eye. If Peter's sister were insincere in one way, why not untrustworthy in others? This was one of the questions that darted into Win's brain at night through one of the holes made there by the giant bees of the "L" road. But the answer was obvious. Miss Rolls might be superficial, insincere, and snobbish enough to dislike claiming acquaintance with a girl of the "working classes," but there was no motive strong enough to make her traduce her brother's character. Even untrustworthy people told the truth sometimes.

It was rather fortunate, perhaps, that Win had another exciting thought to engross her attention at this time, though it was no more agreeable than the thought of Peter Rolls. After her conversation with Mr. Meggison, she confidently expected to find her dismissal in the next pay envelope. It was not there; but, suddenly and without warning, she was dragged out of Blouses and Neckwear and dumped into Toys.

This was as great a surprise to Sadie Kirk and Earl Usher as to Win herself. She dropped upon them as if she had fallen out of the sky—or at least from the top floor. And nobody knew why: whether it was a punishment or a reward. For Toys gave harder work for the hands without a capital H than Blouses and Neckwear, even when Miss Stein was badly "peeved." Also, Mr. Tobias, the floorwalker concerned with the toy department was "a spalpeen and a pie-faced mutt from 'way back," whereas Fred Thorpe was a well-known angel. Yet, on the other hand, not only were more than half the toy assistants men, but many of the customers also were men. This made the department more lively to be in than Blouses, and some girls considered Toys next best to Gloves.

It was almost like coming into a strange shop when Win arrived with Sadie before eight o'clock in the morning for her first day in Toyland, as Earl Usher facetiously named it. The December morning hardly knew yet that it had been born, and though already there was life in the Hands—fierce, active life—those pulsing white globes which made artificial sunshine whatever the weather, had not yet begun to glow like illuminated snowballs. Shadowy men were lifting pale shrouds off the counters. Voices chattering in the gloom were like voices of monkeys in a dusky jungle—a jungle quite unlike that fairy place where Peter Rolls had talked of Win to Lady Eileen. Out of the gloom wondrous things emerged to people, a weird world—the Hands' world of toys.

As Win strained her eyes to see through the dusk, forth from its depths loomed uncouth, motionless shapes. Almost life-size lions and Teddy bears, and huge, grinning baboons as big as five-year-old boys, posed in silent, expressive groups, dangerously near to unprotected dolls' houses with open fronts—splendid dolls' houses, large enough for children to enter, and less important dolls' houses, only big enough for fairies. Dolls' eyes and dolls' dresses and dolls' golden curls caught what little light there was and drew attention to themselves.

Some of them stood, three rows deep (the little ones in front, like children watching a show), on shelves. Others were being fetched out by the chattering shadows, as if they were favourite chorus girls, to display their graces on the counters. They were placed in chairs, or motor cars of doll land, or seated carefully in baby carriages. There were walking dolls and talking dolls and dolls who could suck real milk out of real bottles into tin-lined stomachs. Some exquisitely gowned porcelain Parisiennes, with eyelashes and long hair cut from the heads of penniless children, were almost as big and as aristocratic as their potential millionaire mistresses. Humbler sisters of middle class combined prettiness with cheapness, and had the satisfaction of showing their own price marks.

These delicate creatures, lovely in pale-tinted robes or forlorn in chemises, were the bright spots in the vast, dark department, shining out through the dusk as stars shine through thin clouds. As Win became one of the band of shadows, under Sadie's direction, gradually she grew accustomed to the gloom, and her gaze called many of the strange objects forth into life.

She found long-haired Shetland ponies big enough to ride, glorified hobby horses clad in real skins, and unglorified ones with nostrils like those of her landlady in Columbus Avenue. Biscuit-coloured Jersey cows, which could be milked, gazed mildly into space with expensive glass eyes. Noah's arks, big enough to be lived in if the animals would move up, seemed to have been painted with Bakst colours. Fearsome faces glared from behind the bars of menagerie cages. Donkeys and Chinese mandarins nodded good-morning and forgot to stop. Dragon broods of miniature motor cars nested in realistic garages.

Dramatic scenes from real plays were being enacted in dumb show on the stages of theatres apparently decorated by Rothenstein. The Russian ballet had stopped in the midst of "Le Spectre de la Rose." Suits of armour, which Ursus called "pewter raincoats," glimmered in dark spaces behind piled drums and under limply hanging flags or aeroplanes ready to take flight. Almost everything was mechanical—each article warranted to do what it pretended to do in order to have its appeal for the modern child.

Win was a child of yesterday; yet the big girl has always the little girl of the past asleep in her heart, ready to wake up on the slightest encouragement, and she felt the thrill of Toyland. If when she was small she could ever have dreamed of spending her days in a place like this, she would have bartered her chance of heaven for it—heaven as described in her father's sermons. It was another of life's little ironies that her lot should be cast in a world of toys when she was too old to prefer it to Paradise.

Sadie and Ursus had used up the little time they had in warning her what she would have to expect in Toys.

"There are some punk fellers who'll try it on with you—pinch or tickle you as you pass by, and say things not fit for a dandy guyl like you to hear," the lion tamer had hurriedly explained. "But don't you stand for it. You don't have to! Just hand 'em along to me, and I'll make 'em sorry their fathers ever seen their mothers."

Sadie's story of girl life in Toyland was on the same lines, but with a different moral.

"Don't you tell tales out o' school, no matter what any of the chaps do," was her advice. "I kin hold my own, and I bet you can. You may be a looker, but you ain't anybody's baby doll. If a feller calls you 'childie' or 'sweet lamb' or tells you you're the peacherino in the peach basket, don't you answer back, but just smile and wend your ways. If he goes so far as to put his arm around your waist or take a nip with his nails out of your arm or hip, why, then you can land him one on the napper if nobody's lookin'. But all the same, the chaps mostly ain't so black at heart. They just try to decorate their gray lives a bit, and if those sort of things didn't happen to me once or twicet a day, why I'd be discouraged and think I'd lost my fatal beauty."

For some subtle reason, however, "chaps" did not pinch or tickle Win or slip arms around her waist. One confided to another that he guessed there was nothing "didding" in that direction, and he'd as soon make love to the Statue of Liberty as an English Maypole; which was as well, for from the first moment of her entrance on the scene, the lion tamer kept his eyes open. There were all sorts and conditions of men in Toys, but he was among them as a giant among pygmies; and even if the ex-ship's steward, the ex-trolley driver, the conjurer out of a job, and the smart young men who had been "clerking since they were in long pants," had wished to try their luck with Win, Earl Usher would have shown them the wisdom of turning their eyes elsewhere.

The news soon ran round Toyland that "Winsome Winnie" was Usher's girl. The male "assistants" did no worse than call her by her Christian name (they must have caught it from Sadie), and that was no cause of offence to girl from man in a department store. Every girl in a department shared by men was "Kitty" or "Winny," "Sadie" or "Sweetie," while the men expected to be addressed as Mr. Jones or Mr. Brown, except by their own particular "petsies." Sadie was popular with all, even the "permanences," who considered themselves above the "holiday extras." The ex-steward, a good-looking young German, had offered to get her a dandy place as stewardess when he felt ready to sniff salt water again, and though she wasn't "taking any," and often boxed his ears, she made "dates" with him for dance halls after business hours, especially one called Dreamland, which was too lovely for "wuyds." There were movies, and you could dance till 'most morning. Real swell gentlemen, who wore red badges to show "they was all right," came up and asked if they could "interdooce" other gents to you, in case you'd come in alone and didn't have friends. But Sadie always did have friends.

The red-haired girl, who had from the first been a haunting mystery for Win, was in the toy department. Her name was Lily Leavitt, and—as Sadie had already told Win—she was "chucking herself" at Earl Usher's head. At first Miss Leavitt "lamped" Miss Child "something awful." But on the English girl's third Toy day a thing happened which converted the enemy into a friend—an all too devoted friend.

It was now so near Christmas that in the department devoted to toys and games you could not have placed a sheet of foreign notepaper between mothers (with a sprinkling of aunts and grandmas) unless you wanted it torn to pieces before you could count "One!" Children were massed together in a thick, low-growing underbrush, and of their species only babies were able to rise, like cream, to the top. The air, or rather the atmosphere (since all the air had been breathed long ago), was to the nerves what tow is to fire. Nobody could be in it for ten minutes without wanting to hit somebody else or push somebody else's child, little brute! out of the way.

What with heat, the rage for buying, impatience to get in and impatience to get out, the fragrance of pine and holly decorations, the smell of hot varnish and hot people and cheap furs, the babble of excited voices and shrieks of exhausted children, it was the true Christmas spirit. Peter Rolls's store in general, and the toy department in particular, were having what would be alluded to later in advertisements as an "unprecedented success."

Before Win came the folding chairs for "assistants" had all been broken or out of order. But (no doubt, said Sadie) because of some lingering suspicion that she might, after all, be an anti-sweat spy, the springs or hinges were mysteriously repaired throughout the department. By law any girl could sit down. By unwritten law she mustn't, yet there were the chairs as good as gold and fresh as paint. They were even pointed out to Win, but in the whirl of things the moment after she forgot their very existence and never had time to remember it again.

That third day in Toys was the most appalling she had known of all the long, wild days at Peter Rolls's since coming in as an extra holiday hand. Dozens of customers clamoured for her at once. Each female creature seemed to have as many hands as Briareus, all reaching for things they wanted, or gesticulating and brandishing money, or snatching for change. If each distracted girl had had half a dozen highly trained astral bodies with which to serve these terrible ladies, it would not have been enough. More ladies would have come.

Yet (Win noticed with wondering admiration) some of the girls, those most experienced and less easily rattled, did find opportunities to polish their nails and pat their hair. They would turn as if to find something "in stock," stoop quickly, taking advantage of the crowd behind the counters, snatch out of their stockings tiny mirrors and bags of powder or rouge, and "fix themselves," while their anxious customers supposed they were diving for a toy. These were the girls who kept their own perfumed soap and scent bottles in their lockers and could afford becoming hats, whether or no they had money to buy new underclothes and stockings when the old ones gave out.

Win, however, had neither experience enough nor desire to find time for personal matters. She gave her whole soul to her work and wore that pleasant Christmas smile which floorwalkers wish to see on salesladies' faces. But her smile was only skin deep. She had never liked her sister women less—cross, silly, snapping, inconsiderate things, strutting and pushing about in skins and plumes of animals far more agreeable and beautiful than themselves! Dangling all over with poor little heads of dead creatures, just as if they were moving butcher shops, and apparently without a sense of humour to tell them what idiots they looked.

Yes, idiots! That was the word. And if they had enough humour to put on a thumb nail, could they wear the stick-out and stick-up ornaments on their hats they did wear, to prod each other's eyes? No, they couldn't! And what with feathers standing straight out behind, and long corsets down to their knees, they could never lean back against anything, no matter how tired they were. So, what with tight dresses and high heels and thin silk stockings and low shoes and blouses on winter days, no wonder men wouldn't let them have the vote!

Win turned from an incipient suffragette into a temporarily venomous woman hater when a customer made her show nine dozen dolls, and then minced away saying that Peter Rolls never did have anything worth buying. Another patronizingly bestowed five cents upon Win for her "trouble" after making her change three toys bought yesterday and taking half an hour over it. Altogether, when Winifred Child happened to think of Mrs. Belmont's building with the great figure of a woman falling down the front of it, she would have liked the statue to drop to earth with a crash.

Once in a while, contriving to pass near, Ursus tried to whisper a word of encouragement:

"You're a Wonderchild, you are! Say, it don't spoil your looks bein' tired. You're the picture postal, you are! Never you mind these dames. Say the word and we'll make up with a large time to-night. I'll blow you through all the best movies and stake you to an ice-cream, soda. Do you get yes?"

Despite his well-meant solicitude, however, Win's vitality was at an exceedingly low ebb toward five o'clock in the afternoon of the third day. There had been no time to go out for an alleged luncheon and a breath of fresh air. She had eaten nothing since her breakfast of hot chocolate at a soda fountain, save a poached egg in the employees' restaurant, and, as Sadie said, it wasn't safe to accept an egg from the Hands unless you'd met the hen socially and knew her past. Since four o'clock the exile had been thinking passionately of England, with its millions of women sitting down—actually sitting down!—to tea. And then, suddenly, a man pushed aside a female thing who was being cross because she couldn't find a doll that said "Papa" and "Mama" in German.

"As you can't get what you want, madam, I'm sure you won't mind my taking your place," apologized a cheerful voice. "Madam" was so dumfounded that she gave way. And Win, thankful for a change of sex in her customer, had put on her polite saleslady air before she realized that she was face to face with Jim Logan, her motoring acquaintance of the park.

"Howdy do?" he inquired, and hastily added: "I want a doll. I don't care whether she can talk German or not. Though I do want a little conversation—with somebody."

Money could not be lost to the house of Rolls because one of its female servants wished to snub an admirer. Mr. Logan was even better dressed than when Win had seen him before. He looked rich enough to buy Peter Rolls's star doll, price five hundred dollars, with trousseau. Nevertheless Miss Child determined to outwit him.

"What kind of a doll?" she asked in a business-like tone, showing no sign of recognition. "For a small girl or a large girl? And about what price do you wish to pay?"

"Doll for a middle-sized girl," replied the customer, his twinkling eyes on the young woman serving him. "I like large girls best, girls exactly your size and age, twenty at most, and warranted to look seventeen if given a day's rest and a pretty hat and a supper at Sherry's—with the right man. I don't mind how much trouble I take looking for a doll any more than I mind the trouble of looking for a girl. This is a little sister of mine who has to have a doll. I like other men's sisters better, but—-"

"I think I know just what you want," said Win briskly. "If you'll be good enough to wait here half a minute; I'll see that you get it."

Like a flash she was off, looking for Sadie. But Sadie was too far away. Win didn't want the redoubtable Tobias to scold her for neglecting customers, as she had heard him scold Lily Leavitt the day before, when Lily was trying to flirt with Earl Usher. Close by was Miss Lily Leavitt herself, looking bored to the verge of extinction by an old lady who wished advice in choosing five presents for five grandchildren. "Miss Leavitt," Win whispered, "would it be possible for you to take my man, who wants a doll for a middle-aged sister—I mean, middle-sized—and let me attend to your customer?"

Miss Leavitt threw a green-eyed glance at the man indicated, and said: "Ginks! Ye-h!" as quickly as she could draw breath.

The immediate and brilliant success of the stratagem was as reviving to tired Win as the encounter in the park had been. Her splendid vitality came bubbling to the surface again, and she showed such an interest in selecting the five grandchildren's presents that the old lady thanked Providence for the exchange. No time, no trouble, was too much, and grandma joyously wallowed in layers of toys produced for her inspection.

Now and then, when the old lady was choosing between an aeroplane and a train of cars, or a schoolroom and a Noah's ark, Win took an eyelash-veiled look at Miss Leavitt and her customer. He had apparently bought one doll, veiled like a harem woman, and was hesitating over another. The grandmother of five was not the only person needing advice, it seemed. The brother of one middle-sized sister was evidently demanding it from Miss Leavitt.

In any case, their heads were close together over a Tango Tea doll who tried to look as if she had been dressed by Poiret. It stood to reason that a man might want a woman to tell him whether that was the sort of thing a middle-sized child would like, but though their heads were bent over the doll, their eyes turned occasionally toward Miss Child.

"Keep the change and buy yourself and your friends some little thing for Christmas," Win heard Logan say at last when, discouraged by the interminable length of grandma's visit, he had resigned himself to go away.

The girl glanced involuntarily at Miss Leavitt's hand, which was clenched into a fist. In it was a crisp-looking new greenback on which at one end she thought she saw the word "Ten."

Ten dollars! The man had made Lily Leavitt a present of ten dollars, and she had accepted it! Would he have tried to do the same with her, or would he have attempted to be even more generous if she had not been chaperoned by the grandmother of five? Also, was it just the Christmas spirit, or had Lily done something special to earn the money?



CHAPTER XVIII

THE BIG BLUFF

Lily Leavitt's gratitude was immense. She was a changed girl from that moment. Not that she ceased to like Earl Usher, who awkwardly resented her overtures and was boyishly ashamed of them, but her jealousy seemed, after the handing over of Mr. Logan, to lose its bitterness.

She no longer glared and talked "at" Miss Child, asking if she "wore her hair that way for a bet," and "why some people wanted to take up all the room clerking in stores when they could get better money doing giantess stunts in a Bowery show?" Instead she did her best to make friends with Win and her smart little watchdog, Sadie Kirk.

She brought them presents of hothouse fruit and chocolates, which Win refused and Sadie nonchalantly accepted, wondering "where the Leavitt creature picked 'em up. They didn't grow on blackberry bushes, no fear. And she wasn't going to let 'em spoil!"

As the desperate days before Christmas raged furiously on, Win was still unable to guess Mr. Meggison's real motive for putting her into the toy department. Her duties were more exhausting than they had been downstairs That suggested penance. On the other hand, they had more variety and amusement, for there were five hundred different kinds of toys to sell to five hundred different types of people. That suggested benignity.

Perhaps, thought Sadie, Meggison wanted to see how much the new girl could stand. Perhaps he wished to "sweat out of her" all the work of which she was capable, the full wage worth she could give to Peter Rolls before casting her aside forever.

Or—it was just possible that, instead of exciting resentment she had won his respect by "cheeking" him. That had been known to happen in the most unexpected, though now historic cases. And girls who had awaited their discharge had been promoted, mounting slowly higher and higher over the bodies of those who fell by the wayside, until they had become head buyers, receiving ten thousand dollars a year and a trip to Paris every summer.

In any case, Win liked Toys better than Blouses, though Mr. Tobias (whose hair "left off where it began," and who wore his eyes in bags) was a very "different proposition" from Fred Thorpe, the kind and handsome floorwalker who loved Dora Stein, yet was fair to her rivals. If Tobias saw a young woman stop to breathe he came up and reminded her that this wasn't a matinee—they weren't having a party that day nor serving five-o'clock tea.

The girls, too, were often rough in their ways and pushed each other rudely about. They were surlily suspicious sometimes and seemed temperamentally unable to trust one another, but they were good-natured at heart. "Snap and let snap" was the unwritten law in Toyland, and though they all squabbled among themselves, if a girl were ill or had bad news her companions were ready in an instant to help or console.

They mimicked Win and gave her the same nickname she had gained downstairs, "Miss Thank-you," "Beg-your-pardon," and "If-you-please." But soon she found herself popular, and saw the girls, and even the men, adopting the gentler ways she brought among them. They seemed half unconsciously to fall into the soft manner they made fun of, which was a score for Win. Besides, there was Cupid, and he alone, she thought, would have been worth the move from Blouses into Toys.

Cupid was an errand boy, employed to run with messages from one department to another; but, though in Toyland there were some dolls larger, there were none more beautiful than he. His real name happened to be Billy Slate, but he rejoiced in several others more appropriate such as "Bud," "Christmas Card," and "Valentine" That of "Cupid" was added to the list by Miss Child, who had more scientific, mythological knowledge of the youth in question than any one else at the Hands perhaps, though most of the others could boast a more intimate personal acquaintance with him in modern life.

Billy, alias "Bud," et cetera, was a permanent fixture at Peter Rolls's, having been in his present position for some time and possessing no ambition to better it, though he had reached the mature age of "twelve, going on thirteen." He had resisted the blandishments of all the prettiest girls in the store, but for some reason fell a victim to Miss Child at first sight; perhaps because she was English (his parents came from Manchester), or perhaps because she treated him, not like a little boy, but like a man and an equal. He adored her promptly and passionately, and she responded, out of which arose a situation.

Cupid sometimes received presents of violets or Malmaison pinks from admiring customers, gifts which he spurned with the weary scorn of a matinee idol for love letters, but had been willing to barter for sums varying from one cent to five, according to the freshness of the flowers. When Win drifted into his life, however, all tribute which Cupid received was laid upon her altar. He would take no money—her smiling thanks were worth more to him than the brightest copper coins from others—and an offer of candy was politely but firmly refused.

"Pooh! Miss Child, I can get all of that stuff I want, on my face, off the girls in the candy dep," he explained with a blase air. "You keep it for you and your friends, and I'll get you more. I'm tired of sweet things myself."

And from that time on Win's attenuated meals were eked out by Cupid's presentation chocolates and marshmallows. Of the latter—a novelty to her—she and Sadie were very fond. They seemed nourishing, too, or, at all events, "filling," and came in handy when you had allotted yourself only five cents for luncheon. As soon as Cupid learned his loved one's penchant for marshmallows he contrived to produce a few each day, even if he had to "nick" them when the "candy girls" weren't looking.

The morning of Christmas Eve (the day which, Win knew, would decide her fate at the Hands) Cupid appeared with a whole box of her favourites instead of the five or six crushed white shapes he generally offered in a torn bit of clean paper.

"Why, Cupid, how did you come by this gorgeousness?" asked Win, who had half a minute to spare in the luncheon lull.

"Don't you worry and get a wrinkle, kid," replied the youth, who had permission to apply any pet name he pleased. "The stuff's mine, all right. And now it's yours. Unless you think I sneaked it. Then you can chuck it away, box and all. See?"

"Of course I don't think you sneaked it. You wouldn't do such a thing. But—ought I to take it? That's the question."

"'It's foolish question 786245,'" quoted Cupid with his weariest sneer. "I'm the guy what put the nut in cokernut! I guess there'll be more where this come from in the sweet by and by."

Win eyed him anxiously. Now where had she heard that quotation about the "foolish question?" Why, it was a slang phrase of Mr. Logan's. He had used it only that morning, about half an hour earlier, in gay, bantering conversation with Miss Leavitt. He "blew in," as he called it, nearly every day now to buy something more for his "little sister's Christmas tree," something that he had forgotten yesterday, or to inquire earnestly after the sale of a mechanical frog, which he claimed as his own invention and patent. He had never succeeded in getting Win to serve him, but he was as free to look at her as a cat is free to look at a king.

Apart, however, from telling glances which Miss Child never seemed to see, Mr. Logan appeared quite satisfied with the attentions of Miss Leavitt or Sadie Kirk, who had waited upon him once or twice when Lily was not available.

Suddenly an idea flashed into Winifred's head.

"Did a man give you this box for me?" she inquired.

"Ain't I man enough?" Cupid tried bluff to hide a flush that mounted to his yellow curls.

"Answer me. You must."

"Ain't you some chicken to go on askin' silly questions about a good thing? You just take it, kid, and be thankful"

"I can't, Cupid. I thought you liked me."

"You bet I do, sweetie."

"Then you wouldn't want to cheat me about such a thing, would you? I'm fond of you, Cupid, and we're friends, so I can accept presents from you. But I don't take them from strange men, and I should hate to feel you cared little enough for me to play such a joke. It would get me misunderstood."

Flattered by this appeal to and acceptance of his manhood, Cupid confessed.

"Well, don't have the nasty old stuff, then," said he. "I thought I was doin' you a good turn. Thought gells liked strange men makin' 'em presents. The feller said 'twould be good business for you as well as me. And he tipped me fifty cents to pass you on the box. Suppose I must hand it back to him now."

"Do, Cupid dear," urged Win. "But you shan't lose by that. I know you meant no harm, and I'll give you fifty cents myself when I get my pay."

"What kind of a jay do you take me for?" snorted Cupid. "Men don't accept no lucre from ladies where I live. I'll go chuck the guy back his marshmallers and his dirty money, since you put it that way, my baby doll."

"Where is he? Waiting for you somewhere to hear the news?"

Cupid tossed his curls in the direction of the moving staircase, which in Toyland was known as the "Oscillator." A bored-looking youth was stationed officially at the top in order to catch any ascending lady who might threaten to fall; but as only the oldest and frailest ever did so, his bored expression had become chronic.

"Chap's down at the foot o' that," confessed the boy. "But say, won't you just look and see if there's a note under the cover? Maybe he's slipped in a Christmas gift of a hundred-dollar bill or a diamond tiarey."

"I've no curiosity," said Win. "You may tell your friend that, and—-"

"Oh, I know! Tell him he'd darned better not try the same snap again."

"Yes," laughed Win. "Exactly."

Cupid darted away with the box, striding down the "osculator" as it came rolling up, a feat forbidden. But the boy was a law unto himself and was seldom scolded. When he had gone Win wished that she had thought to ask how the man had found out her liking for marshmallows But perhaps he had invited a suggestion from Cupid. Or the marshmallows might be a coincidence.

She did not for an instant doubt that the would-be giver was Mr. Logan, and she half hoped there was a note inside the box, in order that he might feel the mortification of getting it back unopened. She hoped, also, that the disappointment might be a lesson which Mr. Logan would take to heart, and—unless he were prepared to transfer his attentions to Miss Leavitt or some one else equally ready to receive them—that he would not again invade the busy land of toys.

An hour later, however, he returned and loitered about, ostentatiously waiting until Miss Leavitt should be free to serve him. Win was showing dolls to a fussy woman who could not be satisfied with the most beguiling porcelain or waxen smile. At last, having looked at several dozens, she flounced away, announcing that she would go to Bimgel's. This threat, being uttered in a voice intentionally shrill, was overheard by the hovering floorwalker, Mr. Tobias.

He had never yet had occasion to scold No. 2884; and, as a matter of fact, had noted her as a "lively proposition." He had seen that if 2884 had a few minutes to spare, she usually occupied them, not in polishing her nails or talking about last night's dance, as not a few of the girls did, but in "looking over stock," peeping into boxes, and peering into the background of shelves in order to see for herself what was available without having to question salespeople who had been longer in the department than she.

This was the sure sign of a "winner"; and besides, 2884 had the right way with customers. She kept her temper, even with the most irritating "lemons." Her charming enthusiasm about the toys and her knowledge of their mechanism (when they had any) often hypnotized customers into buying expensive things they had not intended to take. With remarkable quickness she had picked up slang danger signals by which one "assistant" can warn another of impending trouble.

She understood the warning cry of "ishra ankra" for a "crank," and could give the pencil taps telegraphing from counter to counter that a notorious "pill" or an "I'll-come-back-again" was bearing down on the department. She seemed to know by instinct when she could offer to send a toy C.O.D. for a stranger without fear of "cold pig"—having the thing returned unpaid—and she could give enough of her own vitality to a tired woman to make her want to buy.

All these virtues Mr. Tobias had discerned in 2884, and with such heart as he had, he admired her. He intended, if she went on as she had begun, to "set the good word going" which would reach those "at the top." But now, at a moment when he happened through acute indigestion to be in a particularly fretful mood, he believed that he had found out the "bright girl" in a grave fault.

It was too late to inveigle the lost client back, but while Win was hastily replacing dolls in boxes before taking another customer, Mr. Tobias pounced. "Why did you let that lady go without showing her any of our best dolls?" he inquired, angling for guilt in her soul's depths with a fishhook glare.

"I showed her everything of the price she wanted, and even some a little higher," 2884 excused herself.

"What about the doll you all call 'Little Sister?'" Tobias threw out the question as if it were a lasso. "I hear you've said that you won't part with that one if you can help it."

Win grew pink, though she firmly gave him back look for look. Little Sister was her favourite doll, and it was an open secret that Miss Child didn't wish to sell it unless she could be sure of finding it a suitable and happy home. In fact, she hated the thought of a sale. Many Teddy bears and other interesting personalities she had learned to like, and to miss when they went the way of all good Teddy animals; but Little Sister she loved, and to barter that adorable sunny head, those laughing brown eyes and dimples, for money seemed almost as bad as the auctioning of a child in the slave market. If she had had twenty dollars to play with she would have bought the doll for herself. As it was, she had to plead guilty to Mr. Tobias's charge.

She changed her look of self-defence to one more deprecating yet half mischievous; not the look of a scolded girl to an accusing floorwalker, but that of charming young womanhood to man.

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I didn't forget; but I felt sure that lady wouldn't spend twenty dollars for a doll. And I know I can find a better—I mean, I know I can get some one to buy it."

"I'll buy it," said Mr. Logan, stepping up.

This time he had safely caught his tantalizing rainbow trout, which had not a chance even to wriggle. There was 2884 without an excuse in the shape of another customer, and there was Tobias, with whom, on the strength of the alleged "invention," Mr. Jim Logan had already scraped acquaintance.

The eyes of the girl and the man met. Logan saw that Miss Child had already guessed what he meant to do, or that she thought she had. But he believed that he had a card up his sleeve whose presence even her sharp wit had not detected. He looked forward joyously to the scene about to begin.

"Get the doll I spoke of and show it to this gentleman," commanded Mr. Tobias, lingering to see that he was obeyed, for there was that in the flushed face of 2884 which told him she was capable of a trick.

Little Sister lived in a large, open-fronted box lined with blue silk and fluffy lace, in a desirable but not too conspicuous (Win had seen to that!) corner of a shelf devoted entirely to dollhood. There she stood now, the sweet, smiling child, the image of the ideal two-year-old baby which every girl would like to have for her own "when I'm married."

In reaching up her hands to take down the box Win hesitated. Next but one was another doll, not unlike Little Sister to the casual eye, especially the casual eye of a mere man. Its dress was also white; its hair was of much the same gold, though not quite so radiant; its eyes were as brown, if more beady; and it was larger, more elaborately gowned, therefore more expensive. If Mr. Tobias recognized the difference, would he not praise rather than blame the saleswoman, since instructions were to force high-priced articles on customers whenever possible?

Win darted a cornerwise glance at Tobias to see if he were suspiciously watching her. He was, with the expression of a cloud about to emit a flash of forked lightning. Little Sister must be sacrificed!

Just then, as Win reluctantly placed the box on the counter for Logan's twinkling inspection, Cupid went by on one of the endless errands which, as he said, "kept him jerking up and down all day like a churn." He knew Little Sister, for had not his beloved "Kid" ruffled his feelings by remarking on a likeness between her pet doll and himself? Infra dig as was the comparison, he had forgiven it when the Kid explained her affection for the type. Now that Fresh Guy who had nearly "got him disliked" for fifty cents was going to buy the doll!

Cupid "spotted" the trick at once and saw its cleverness. The boy "made big eyes" at Win as he stumped past, and wondered whether she "was fly enough to catch on" to what he wanted them to say.

She was not. At that moment, when she found herself outwitted by Logan, Cupid's big hazel eyes and yellow head seemed irrelevant.

"The price is twenty dollars," she announced mechanically. These were the first words she had uttered to Logan since passing him on to Miss Leavitt the day of his first appearance in Toyland.

"That's all right," said her smiling customer. "Rather cheap for such a handsome doll, isn't it? I think the young person I intend to give it to will be pleased, don't you?"

"I can't say, I'm sure," returned Miss Child with aggravating primness, her eyes cast down.

"Why, you might give me your advice!"

The glare of Mr. Tobias was turned upon her again, like a two-dollar electric torch.

"It's quite one of our prettiest dolls," she admitted under the searchlight.

"Good! I'm glad you think so. Well, here's the money, all in small bills, I'm afraid. Would you mind just counting it over? I've got on my gloves."

She had to take the money from him, which gave him a chance to touch her hand, and he made the most of it. If Mr. Tobias saw what was going on, he ignored it tactfully, for the great thing was to keep a good customer at any price. If the price were a flirtation, why all the better for the girl, provided the man were chump enough to give her a good restaurant dinner now and then. Peter Rolls had to think of his dividends, since he and his manager were not in business for their health, and to make them satisfactory salesfolk had to be got cheap. It was "up to" the girls to take care of themselves. What they did out of business hours, Peter Rolls and Mr. Tobias did not care and didn't want to know.

No. 2884 required the address, which Mr. Logan seemed eager to give.

"Write clearly, please," he gayly commanded. "Miss—Winifred—Child. And now the number of the house. I know it as well as my own."

"I can't accept this," she said, not taken by surprise, because she had been sure all along of what he meant. Only it came as a slight shock that he should have found out her whole name and the street and house where she lived.

"But see here," argued Logan, still in the low tone to which both voices had fallen, "I bought the doll for you when I heard you liked it. Why not? No harm in taking a doll from a friend."

"You're not a friend," she broke in.

"I want to be. What will that floorwalker chap say if Little Sister is thrown back on Peter Rolls's hands? It might get you into trouble."

"I can't help that," Win was beginning desperately, when Earl Usher came hurrying up from the other end of the department, where he had been selling automatic toy pistols.

"Excuse me, Miss Child," said he briskly, "but that doll is sold. I ought to have marked it, but forgot. My fault. While you was away to lunch it happened. The purchaser is going to look in to-night, between six and six-thirty, to pay and take the parcel away."

Mr. Tobias, hearing this announcement, came bustling into closer earshot again.

"Very remiss—very remiss not to have marked the doll as sold," he sputtered. "I don't think we can let the deal stand. This gentleman has offered to purchase in good faith, and here's his money. Your customer may as like as not go back on the bargain."

"He won't," said Ursus firmly. "It's a man. He's often here doing business. He'll be awful mad, and we'll lose him certain sure if we throw him down like that. I'll be responsible."

"You!" sneered Tobias, impressed nevertheless. "Why, you ain't more than a ten-dollar man, if you're that. This doll costs twenty dollars."

"I know, and I don't pretend to have saved up a million. But this mix-up is my fault, and the man was my customer, so I ought to stand the racket. Look here," and he proudly drew forth from some inner pocket on his enormous chest a handsome gold watch destitute of a chain. "Presentation," he announced. "You can see my name and the date. I've hocked this more'n once and got forty. Will you keep it till my customer turns up?"

"No," returned Tobias magnanimously. "If you're so sure of your man, I guess it's all right, and the sale'll have to stand. I'm sorry, Mr. Logan. But you see how it is. Can't one of our young ladies show you something else?"

"No, thank you, not to-day," said Logan, his long, sallow face red and the twinkle gone out of his eyes. "It was Little Sister or nothing for me."

But though he gathered up his mass of greenbacks and stalked away with his smart hat on the back of his incredibly sleek head, Tobias was not greatly worried. The young swell was sweet on Child, and wasn't above a flirtation with red-haired Leavitt at the same time he was trying to spoon the English girl. He would come back, and soon—no fear!—to see how his invention was going.

"Lordy! but that was a big bluff I put up!" sighed Earl Usher to Cupid, as he slid his watch into the little boy's hand. "If Tobias had taken me, I'd 'a' bin up a tree! Sure you can get off, sonny?"

"Dead sure, for they'll be sendin' me out. They always do. I'll manage the biz for you."

"Good Bud! You get a quarter for yourself, see?—for puttin' me on to the job in time."

Mr. Tobias happened to be at a distance when Usher's customer came in and paid. But when the floorwalker inquired, at six-thirty—characteristically remembering a small detail in the terrible Christmas rush—the transaction had been completed and Little Sister was gone. Even Win had not seen the purchaser. Ursus had come in a hurry, his client's twenty dollars in hand, and had taken away the box that contained the doll. There had not even been time to ask if the man who had bought it looked kind and rich; but Win was too thankful to have been saved from her "scrape" with Logan to care passionately, after all, for Little Sister's fate.

That night, a few minutes before ten o'clock, the employees of the various sections were lined up (men in one aisle, girls in another) to receive their pay envelopes and, in most cases where the "holiday extras" were concerned, their dismissals. Just in front of Winifred Child was Sadie Kirk, and Win knew that for her friend it was a question almost as important as that of life and death whether she were to stay or go.

After holiday time it was dreadfully difficult to get work, she not being the stuff of which stewardesses are made, and Sadie had more pluck than physical strength. Never had she entirely recovered "tone" after that attack of grippe which had lost her a good position, and the strenuous work during these weeks at Peter Rolls's had pulled her down. If she were to be "out of a job" things would be very bad for her; yet, as she moved up slowly, step by step, to the desk of destiny, she was reading a novel, calmly straining her eyes in the trying light. Over her shoulder Win could see the name of the book, "Leslie Norwood's Wife." Page after page Sadie turned, not with a nervous flutter, but with the regularity which meant concentration. She was bent on finding out what happened to Leslie Norwood's wife before the moment came to find out what was about to happen to Sadie Kirk.

She was near the end now. But was she near enough? Win began, in her nervous fatigue and anxiety on her own account, to wager with herself as to whether Sadie would finish that book before her turn came to take the fateful envelope. Would she? Would she not? "I bet she will!" Win thought. "If she does, it'll mean luck for us both!"

And she did. Just as the girl ahead of Sadie clasped her pay envelope with a slightly trembling hand, Sadie read the last word on the last page, shut the volume, and tucked it under her arm. Then she took her envelope and gave place to Win.

They were among the few lucky ones out of the extra two thousand. Most of the others received with their pay little printed slips signed "Peter Rolls," announcing that it was "necessary to readjust our force down to the normal at this time." Those dismissed were politely informed that their record was on file. Should vacancies occur where they might be placed in future, they would be "notified to that effect." Meanwhile they were thanked for loyal service. And—that was the end of them as far as Peter Rolls was concerned.

He still had use, however, for Winifred Child, Sadie Kirk, Earl Usher, and two or three other "live" workers in Toyland. They compared notes joyously; but despite her sense of relief, Win's heart was heavy for those left out in the cold. The girls who were disappointed hurried away in silence, but many of the men whom No. 2884 had not thought of as friends, scarcely as acquaintances, came up to say good-bye. They held out their hands and remarked that they were "glad to have known her."

Some of her ways and some of her sayings were pretty good, they guessed, and they wouldn't forget her, although they didn't suppose that they'd ever meet again. Suddenly Win realized that they had been kind and pleasant, so far as it had lain in their power, and she, staying on, would miss the faces that were gone. She choked a little over these men's appreciation of the difference between her "ways" and those of some other girls, and was half ashamed that it should surprise her.

"I expect I'll have to take to the sea again," sighed the ex-steward. "I wanted a little more time on land, but it ain't to be. Don't forget, you and your friend Sadie, that I can get you jobs on one of the big greyhounds."

"What a Christmas Eve!" Win said to herself aloud, as she almost fell into her room at eleven-thirty. "In half an hour more it will be Christmas, and I don't suppose there's one soul with a thought for me in all Europe or America!"

But on the ugly red cover (warranted not to betray dirt) of the rickety bed were two parcels—a big box and a little one. Somebody must have been thinking of her, after all!

Revived, she cut the strings on both boxes and opened the little one first, on the childlike principle of "saving the best thing for the last."

"Lilies of the valley! Why, how lovely! Who could have sent them?" There was no name, and a question asked itself in Win's mind that spoiled all her pleasure—but only for a moment. She unwrapped the big box, and on the cover (which looked curiously familiar) she read, evidently scrawled in furious haste, with pencil: "From Ursus to Lygia, with respectful regards and wishes for a merry Christmas. Also please accept lilies."

(Miss Leavitt had testified her admiration for the blond giant by sending him a box of her name flowers, bought with some of the "change" Mr. Logan had told her to keep. The admired one had promptly "passed them on." But Win did not know this, and he didn't see why she ever should. Anyhow, flowers were flowers!)

The girl was so pleased to know that the lilies came from Ursus, not another, that she could almost have kissed them—but not quite. Then, in her relief, she lifted the cover of the large box and gave a cry which was not unlike a sob. There, in silk and lace, with eyes closed and smiling lips, lay Little Sister.

"Oh, his watch—his presentation watch!" she gurgled. And sitting on the bed, with the great doll in her arms, she let fall on the unresponsive head a few tears of grief and gratitude. She understood everything now, even the "big bluff."

What had been or had not been in Miss Leavitt's pay envelope Win did not know until the morning after Christmas, that strangest Christmas of her life, which she spent resting quietly in bed. Returning next day to Toyland, where everything looked half asleep in the early gloom, she saw the glitter of red hair.

"Hello!" said Miss Leavitt. "Here we are again! Did you have a merry—-"

She stopped short, her eyes fastened on a tiny spray of pearly bells half hidden in the folds of the other's black silk blouse. For an instant she forgot what she had meant to say, gasped slightly, closed her lips, opened them as if to speak, shut her teeth together with a snap, swallowed heavily, and went on where she had broken off—"Christmas?"

Win thanked her, said "Yes," and asked politely how Miss Leavitt had spent her holiday. This gave the girl with red hair time to control the temper which accompanied it. But if, in that brief interval of uncertainty, she had burst out with the fierce insult which burned her tongue, never again could she have ventured to claim friendship with Winifred Child. And if she had lost her right to claim it, all the future might have been different for one of them.



CHAPTER XIX

"YES" TO ANYTHING

At last it was July, and New York felt like a vast hermetically sealed Turkish bath into which all were free to enter, but once in, must remain, as there were no exits and no closing hours. Most of the people you read about in the Sunday supplements (except those who commit murders and such things) had escaped to the sea or mountains before the Turkish bath opened for the summer. But there is never anything in Sunday supplements about the assistants in department stores, for they are fashionable only in restricted districts, and they do not commit murders and such things, though they might occasionally enjoy doing so.

It had been, said the newspapers, an exceptionally gay winter and spring. Seldom had there been so many beautiful and important debutantes. Lovely girls and admiring men had decorated each page of the calendar, like rose petals. There had been cup races for automobiles, and football and baseball matches for men and girls, and other matches less noisy but almost as emotional. There had been dinners and balls, first nights at the opera, Washington's Birthday week-end house parties in the Adirondacks, and Easter church parades for those who had not gone abroad or to Florida. Among those who chose Florida (there had been a great deal about this in the Sunday supplements) were Miss Rolls and her brother. Ena had collapsed under an alleged attack of grippe after Lord Raygan went away and his engagement with Portia (alias "Pobbles") Gregory—the rich Miss Gregory—was announced. Some people were mean enough to say that it was not grippe but grief which laid Ena low in the height of the season; and if there was anything in this gossip, the grief would have been greater had Miss Rolls known that she herself was (indirectly) responsible for the happy ending of Raygan's romance.

A letter written by Lady Eileen while at Sea Gull Manor to her cousin Pobbles had (so Pobbles confessed later) suddenly opened the lady's eyes to her own true feelings. She began to wonder if Rags had loved her "for herself," after all. And, anyhow, she didn't want a girl like Ena Rolls to get him. So she met the ship on which Lady Raygan, Rags, and Eileen returned to Ireland, in order to "make a dead set" at the man she had once discarded. An engagement was the consequence, and in the first letter Rags wrote to thank his kind host and hostess on Long Island, he asked for congratulations.

It was the same day that Ena began to sneeze so dismally that the only place for her was bed. And when she could leave its seclusion the next only place was Palm Beach. She said she would die unless she could go to Palm Beach, so mother took her, and Peter took them both, not to speak of Ena's maid.

He did not wish to play courier. To turn his back on New York interfered seriously with his plans and half plans and hopes and half hopes. But father would not go, and mother and Ena could not without a man. Peter was the only one available at the moment, and it was April when Ena felt well enough to face the North again. By this time the news of her engagement to the Marchese di Rivoli had been copied from all the principal papers into the little papers, and even the most confirmed cats must be acknowledging far and near that to lose an earl and gain a marquis is a step up in life.

It was, of course, not ideal that the Marchese di Rivoli had no remaining family estates of which his fiancee could talk, and there were creatures ready to swear not only that he had come to Palm Beach to pick up an heiress, but that the penniless princess who introduced him to Miss Rolls had received a commission. Still there are always family estates in the market, and where a coronet is there is gossip also. Only the cat tribe start or believe it, and even cats purr to a marchesa, lest they may want to visit Italy next year.

In the Turkish bath which was New York that July, Peter Rolls's department store was one of the hot rooms. Miss Rolls did not come over from Long Island to choose her trousseau there, as a badly informed newspaper announced that she would do. She went to London and Paris instead, because it was cooler as well as smarter to put the Atlantic between her and "New York with the lid off." She ran over with the divorced Italian princess who had made her acquainted with the Marchese di Rivoli, and mother and Peter were released.

No doubt other big stores were as hot or hotter than Peter Rolls's that July; but it seemed to Winifred Child that the Tropic of Cancer might have breezes which the Hands missed. Those of the salespeople who did not look as if at any moment their eyes might come out and all their veins burst, were living advertisements for Somebody's Anti-Anemia Mixture before the mixture was taken. Win was of the latter type. She had become so pale and thin that Sadie Kirk compared her to a celery stalk. Sadie herself had, according to her own criticism, "shrunk and faded in the wash," but the two girls had now few chances of "passing remarks" on each other's appearance, for, though Sadie was still in Toys, Win had been put into Mantles.

This in itself was a solution of the Meggison mystery. The girl's "cheek" had frightened the would-be "dog" and reminded him that a model superintendent must never lose a born saleswoman. But he had not sent for Win again, and Gloves were not for such as she.

Sadie, having "sauced" her landlady, found it wise to change her quarters. She had taken a room in an apartment house two blocks removed from her former home, and Win, not being able to afford a "flit," remained at the old address. At first, when her pay was increased by two dollars a week, she had intended to save and follow Sadie. One had, however, to live mostly on ice-cream soda in the hot weather, which cost money. Besides, even had she possessed the dollars, she lacked energy of late. It was easier to keep on doing what one had done than do anything new. And, in any case, nothing that one did seemed to matter.

As for the lion tamer, Peter Rolls's shop saw him no more. He had "got his nerve back" and had returned to lion taming, not because the old life drew him irresistibly, but because there was far more money in dominating real lions than in selling Teddy ones.

In the birth of Earl Usher's adoring love for Win the demise of the animal who had "died on him" was forgotten. "Nerve" and courage and love and the desire to conquer were one in his heart. When a "good summer job at Coney" came his way, through an old friend in the "show business," he took it.

Reluctant as he was to leave Peter Rolls, which meant leaving "his girl," a change of position offered the only hope of obtaining her in the end. And despite every discouragement from his Lygia, Ursus did secretly cherish this hope. As she no longer lived in Toyland when he went, the wrench of parting was not what it would have been to leave her at the mercy of any man who could afford to buy a doll. There was no excuse for men to "butt into" Mantles, unless accompanied by female belongings, and thus accompanied, their sting was gone.

At Coney Island Ursus was earning thirty dollars a week instead of ten, and was encouraged by crowds of admiring girls (who watched his performance and bought his photographs) to consider himself exceedingly eligible on that income. Many indeed made it plain to him that he would have been worth taking for his face, his muscles, and his spangled tights alone.

Sometimes on Sundays Sadie Kirk persuaded Win to "go to Coney for a blow." The crowd on the boats was alarming and on the beach when you got there, but the air was splendid, and poor Ursus beamed over his lions' heads with pride and pleasure. These few excursions, however, had been Winifred's only outings, except a play or two seen from a gallery, since she came to make her fortune in America; and as each day the heat pressed more heavily upon her with its leaden weight, she felt that she would collapse and "do something stupid" if she could not have a change. Anything—anything at all that was different and would break the monotony!

Lily Leavitt, who was in the Mantles, too, had never ceased to be friendly, and had often invited Win to go out with her in the long summer evenings, but always in vain, month after month, until one day in mid-July, when the heat wave had surged to its record height. It just chanced—if there be such a thing as chance—to happen on the day when the girl's craving for a change had become an obsession, almost an illness.

It was a little past noon, and the seniors in Mantles had gone out to lunch. They were rather by way of being aristocrats, these seniors, for the mantle department, Jewellery, and some others worked "on commission." Salaries were no larger than elsewhere, but a handsome percentage was paid on sales; and those tigers and tigresses who were strong and ferocious enough to grab meat from under their weaker comrades' noses did extremely well. The Mantles girls who had gone out were champion tigresses. They could afford to eat at something like real restaurants, and as there was nothing worth rushing back for, they would not return until the last moment.

Lily Leavitt, who was qualifying as a tigress, had just snatched a sale which ought to have been Win's, but that did not count in their private relations. It was business, and Win was "welcome to play the same game"—if she could. Only, there was no danger that she would. Win was not of the stuff from which tigresses are made, and was incapable of seizing for herself anything—be it a seat in the subway or the chance to sell a mantle—which some other human creature was striving to get.

Win bore Lily no grudge for having "bagged" her customer and gained in three minutes three dollars which should rightfully have found their way to her purse. She listened without resentment to the description of a hat which Lily intended to buy with the money—a "sticker" it had proved in Hats, and was now marked down to half price. Lily had had an eye on it for some time, and would, of course, get it "ten per." off.

"I bought me a sweet party dress last week—a bargain," Miss Leavitt went on, seeing that Win had no intention of "slanging" her for what she had just done. "It came outta commission on that green chiffon evening cloak and that white yachtin' I snapped off Kit Vance when she was daydreamin' and let me catch onto her customer like you done just now. Things is down to no price this hot weather. It's an ill wind blows no one good, and now is us guyls' time to get a bit of our own. P.R. always manages to make his hay, rain or shine. And even with our ten per. off, it's forty per. profit for him. When you think there's two thousand folks forced to buy on the premises, you savvy what he squeezes outta us! If we do pick up a bargain, it's a rare chance. I wonder you don't hustle more'n you do and make enough com to buy yourself sumpin' nice. Your sheryt waists are the wuyst in the dep, if you don't mind my sayin' so, and the guyls speak of it. Now if you had a party dress to doll up in, I could give you the time of your life to-night."

"Could you?" echoed Win, more in the desire to turn Miss Leavitt's attention from her "shirt waist" to something else than because she wished to hear about the great opportunity.

Miss Leavitt had offered her numerous opportunities of alleged entertainment, none of which, though glowingly described, had ever tempted her to acceptance. At first she had been afraid of Lily's fruit and chocolates and theatre tickets, which, like the marshmallows, might have come from Mr. Logan. But for the last three or four months, since the two girls migrated together into Mantles, Logan had been conspicuously absent. Apparently he had not invented a cloak as well as a toy! Win no longer connected Lily Leavitt's occasional invitations with him. Her refusals were prompted merely by a disinclination for Lily's society out of business hours and the conviction that her friends would be no more congenial than herself. Winifred now, however, particularly wished to show her companion that she bore no animosity for the filched commission, therefore she became loquacious.

"I don't need to spend my hard-earned dollars on a party dress, as it happens," she said. "I can save all my pennies for the hire of my typewriter, which is going to lead me from the Hands some day along the road to fortune. I've got the most gorgeous gown you can possibly imagine. I don't believe Cinderella's godmother could give her anything better. There's only one trouble. I shall never be invited to a party good enough for it."

"I've invited you to as swell a party as there could be in little old New York," boasted Miss Leavitt. "I ain't foolin'. That's straight. Honour bright, cross my heart."

"Oh, but you didn't invite me. You said you would if I had a dress. You've got only my word for that," Win reminded her.

"I meant to invite you all the same, dress or no dress," Lily confessed, "I'd o' lent you one. Have you really got something swell? If you have, now's your chance to show it off. It's an artist gives this party. I sit to artists sometimes, Sundays, for my hair. I guess you offen seen it on covers o' magazines. This artist friend o' mine's the best o' the whole bunch."

"Man or woman?" Win wanted to know.

She expected the answer to be "man," but Lily did not seem to hear. Her face looked dreamy.

"It's the loveliest house where the party'll be," she said. "'Tain't the artist's own. It's some relation's that's lent it for the summer while they're away at the seashore. I bin there. It's in the Fifties, just off Fift' Av'noo. Tonight it'll be cool as snow, and everything'll be iced for supper. Iced consummay, chicken salad cold as the refrigerator, iced champagne cup flowin' like water; ice-cream and strawb'ries, the big, sweet, red ones from up north, where they keep on growin' all summer, and lilies and roses from the country to give away to us when we go home."

Win forgot the question that had not been answered. She seemed to see those strawberries and to smell the sweetness of roses and lilies in a house "as cool as snow."

"Heavenly!" she sighed. "I didn't remember there were such things in the world!"

"Well, come with me to-night and remind yourself," coaxed Miss Leavitt. "You needn't be afraid, because I said it was artists, to butt into some rowdy crowd. They'll be as quiet and refined as mice. They're more your kind than mine, I guess."

"But who invites me?" Win made another bid for information.

"My artist friend said I could bring any one I wanted to bring, and I want to bring you. I don't just know who all'll be there, but I guess not many, and it's a real swell house to see. You always refuse everything I ask you to, but I do think you might say yes this one time and show you're not proud and stuck up. It'd do you good!"

"I believe it would, and I'll go!" cried Win. She was in the mood to say "yes" to anything.

"Hully gee! That's the best thing's happened to me since the measles!" exclaimed Miss Leavitt jovially. "I'll call for you at your place half-past nine this evening, so you can have a good rest before you begin fixin' yourself up."

"It's an engagement," said Win, with a kind of self-defiance.

She had wished for a change, "anything for a change," and presto! her wish had been suddenly granted by fate. Rather spitefully granted, it would seem, because to go to a "party" with Lily Leavitt was the very last thing she would have chosen. And spitefully, also, as if to punish her own foolishness in wishing, she accepted such goods as the gods had mischievously provided.

"You've said yes, and now you must stick to it," she told herself in preparation for a wave of regret, but to her surprise the day wore on and the expected tide of repentance did not set in.

The girl realized that she was looking forward, actually looking forward to the evening. It would be like walking wide awake into the Hall of Dreams to put on a dress beautiful enough for a princess, and eat ice-cream and big red strawberries in a house "cool as snow" instead of sitting in her hot bedroom practising on the hired typewriter or panting on her bed, dead to everything in the world except a palm-leaf fan.

When she had been a little girl, invited to children's parties, it had not been of the slightest importance whether she liked the child or not. The party was the thing. Now history was repeating itself in her nature. The blank monotony of life and work had given back that childish eagerness for fun, no matter whence it came. She did not care whose ice-cream and strawberries she was going to eat, provided she got them and they were good. Besides, it would be like finding an old lost friend to look into her mirror (it was cracked and turned one's complexion pale green, with iridescent spots; but that was a detail) and see a bare-necked, white-armed girl in evening dress.

There was a new way of doing the hair which Win had noticed on a smiling wax beauty in Peter Rolls's Window-World and had dimly wished to try for herself. Only dimly, because if her hair were glossy and trim it suited those plain, ninety-eight-cent shirt waists better than the elaborate fashions affected by Lily Leavitt and one or two of the more successful tigresses who cheaply copied expensive customers. Now there was an incentive for the experiment and Win laughed at the eagerness with which she looked forward to the moment of making it, laughed patronizingly, as she might have laughed at a child's longing for Christmas.

"Anyhow, it's something that I can laugh," she thought, recalling, as she often did, her boast to Peter Rolls, Jr. "And I haven't cried yet!"

She had not guessed how vividly the sight of the Moon dress and putting it on would bring Mr. Balm of Gilead to her mind. But as she stood gazing into the greenish glass, with her hair very successfully done in the new way and the Moon gown shimmering night-blue and silver, it was as if Peter Rolls came and looked over her shoulder, their eyes meeting in the mirror.

Yes, she saw him for an instant as clearly as that. He was there. He was her friend, the nicest, most altogether delightful man she had ever seen; the one she knew best and needed most, though their actual acquaintanceship was but a few days old. The kind blue eyes were true and brave, and said: "I dare you not to believe in me, as I believe in you!"

Then the vision (it had almost amounted to that) was gone like a broken bubble. Win felt physically sick, as if the one thing worth having in the world had been shown her for a second, then suddenly snatched away forever.

The silvery sheen and the faint, lingering perfume of that Nadine model gown had woven a magic carpet of moonbeams and transported her back to the mirrored room on the Monarchic for an instant. But it was only for an instant. Then the Columbus Avenue bedroom, with its window open to the roar and rush of the "L," had her again, and made the Moon dress and the Moon-dress dreams seem ridiculously unsuited to life.

Win touched a switch which shut off light from the one unshaded electric bulb hanging like a lambent pear over her head. Then, palm-leaf fan in hand, she sat down in the blue summer darkness to await the coming of Miss Leavitt.

For the first time she repented her promise to go out. Monotony was preferable to the party as she pictured it—a silly, giggling crowd of crude young people among whom she, the stranger, would be like a muted note on a cheap piano. Should she stay at home, after all, and tell Lily that the heat had made her too limp to stir? It would be quite true. But no. If she stayed she would not have the courage to undress for a long, long time. She would just sit there in the dark by the window in the Moon gown, its perfume surrounding her with the past, shutting her up, as it were, in the mirror room with Mr. Balm of Gilead who had never really existed.

Yet, had he not? What had the eyes in the cracked glass said just now? Why shouldn't she believe them instead of Ena Rolls's dreadful hints? Why might not a sister, even with the best intentions, be mistaken about a brother?

These were exactly the sort of questions that were upsetting and altogether useless to ask one's self, and Win jumped up to turn on the electric light again. She would go with Lily Leavitt!

Five minutes later a taxicab—a real, live, magnificent, unthinkably expensive taxicab—stopped and chortled in front of the apartment house in which Mrs. McFarrell's flat was one of many. Heads flew out of windows, for the thing was unbelievable, and among other heads was Win's.

Instinct cried that the chortling was for her. The balcony where the rubber plants had died and mummied themselves, being scarcely more than a foot wide, she was able to see a face, crowned with red hair and white as a Pierrette's in the lights of the street, looking anxiously up from the cab window. Its expression implored the guest to hurry down, because each heart-throb meant not a drop of red blood, but several red cents. Win caught the message, and seizing the ancient though still respectable evening cloak which had spent months in a trunk with the "New Moon," she flew downstairs.