“You boys guy me with my close-fisted buying these last two years.  It’s up to me, Milt, to squeeze this old shebang dry.  There’s not much more than a living in it at best, and now, with Selene grown up and naturally wanting to have it like other girls, it ain’t always easy to see my way clear.  But I’ll do it, if I got to trust the store for a year to a child like Selene.  I’ll get her back.”

“You can call on me, Mrs. C., to keep my eye on things while you’re gone.”

“You boys are one crowd of true blues, all right.  There ain’t a city salesman comes out here I wouldn’t trust to the limit.”

“You just try me out.”

“Why, just to show you how a woman don’t know how many real friends she has got, why—­even Mark Haas, of the Mound City Silk Company, a firm I don’t do a hundred dollars’ worth of business with a year, I wish you could have heard him the other night at the Y.M.H.A., a man you know for yourself just goes there to be sociable with the trade.”

“Fine fellow, Mark Haas!”

“‘When the time comes, Mrs. Coblenz,’ he says, ’that you want to make that trip, just you let me know.  Before the war there wasn’t a year I didn’t cross the water twice, maybe three times, for the firm.  I don’t know there’s much I can do; it ain’t so easy to arrange for Russia, but, just the same, you let me know when you’re ready to make that trip.’  Just like that he said it.  That from Mark Haas!”

“And a man like Haas don’t talk that way if he don’t mean it.”

“Mind you, not a hundred dollars a year business with him.  I haven’t got the demands for silks.”

“That wash silk I’m telling you about, though, Mrs. C., does up like a—­”

“There’s ma thumping with the poker on the up-stairs floor.  When it’s closing-time she begins to get restless.  I—­I wish Selene would come in.  She went out with Lester Goldmark in his little flivver, and I get nervous about automobiles.”

Mr. Bauer slid an open-face watch from his waistcoat.

“Good Lord! five-forty, and I’ve just got time to sell the Maplehurst Emporium a bill of goods!”

“Good-night, Milt; and mind you put up that order of assorted neckwear yourself.  Greens in ready-tieds are good sellers for this time of the year, and put in some reds and purples for the teamsters.”

“No sooner said than done.”

“And come out for supper some Sunday night, Milt.  It does mama good to have young people around.”

“I’m yours.”

“Good-night, Milt.”

He reached across the counter, placing his hand over hers.

“Good-night, Mrs. C.,” he said, a note lower in his throat; “and remember that call-on-me stuff wasn’t all conversation.”

“Good-night, Milt,” said Mrs. Coblenz, a coating of husk over her own voice and sliding her hand out from beneath, to top his.  “You—­you’re all right!”

* * * * *