“Young man,” said her testy voice in Peter’s ear, “I’ve got to get something and I can’t remember what it is.  You’ve got to help me.  I can’t be wasting my time at my age o’ life running around to hardware stores.”

Peter thrust the miraculous telegram in his pocket, where he could feel it burn and tingle.  Oh, it was true, it was true!  He was going to get away from all this!

“For heaven’s sake, boy, don’t stand there gawping at me like a thunderstruck owl!  You surely know about everything you’ve got in this store, don’t you?  Well, then, Peter Champneys, look about you and see if you can’t light on what I’m most likely to need!”

Peter, mind on the telegram in his pocket, did indeed look at the old lady owlishly.  Hazily he remembered certain grueling, sweating half-hours spent in trying to discover what Mrs. Beach thought she might want to buy.  Hazily he looked from her to the littered shelves, and reached for the first object upon which his eyes happened to fall.

“Yes ’m, Mrs. Beach.  I reckon this is what you’d most likely need,” said Peter, gently, and placed in her hand a fine new muzzle. (Paris, maybe Rome; and Florence!  Oh, names to conjure with!  And he should see them all, walk their historic streets, view immortal work, stand before immortal canvases, and say with Correggio:  “And I, too, am a painter!”)

“Oh, my dear Lord, save me from bursting wide open!  Why, you impudent young reprobate!” Mrs. Beach’s outraged voice banished his dream.  “For two pins, Peter Champneys, I’d take you across my knees and spank the seat off your breeches!  I need a muzzle, do I?  I’m to be insulted by a little squirt that’s just learning to keep his ears clean!  Well!  Girl and woman I’ve been dealing with Sam Humphreys and his father before him, but from this day forth I put no foot of mine across this store door!” All the while she spoke she brandished the muzzle at Peter and kept backing him off into a corner.

Mr. Humphreys came hurriedly out of his office upon hearing the uproar, and sought with soothing speech to placate his irate old friend and customer.  But Mrs. Beach wasn’t to be placated.  She went out of the door and down the street like a hat on a windy day.

Mr. Humphreys watched her go.  Then he turned and looked at Peter Champneys, ominously: 

“Peter,”—­Mr. Humphreys, carefully restraining himself, spoke in low and dulcet tones—­“Peter, I have tried to do my duty as a Christian man; now I have to do it as a hardware man, and right here is where you and I say good-by.  I have passed over,” said Mr. Humphreys, swallowing hard, “your sending gravel to the grocer and a bellows to the minister by mistake; but this is the limit.  If there is anybody advertising for a gilt-edged failure as a salesman, you go apply for the job and say I recommend you enthusiastically.  I hate like the devil to fire you, Peter, but it’s a plain case of self-defense with me:  I have to do it.  You’re fired.  Now.  Come on in the office,” said Mr. Humphreys, eagerly, “and I’ll pay you off.”