“Gorgeous!” responded Richard, eying an undoubtedly eye-catching arrangement of blankets of every hue and quality piled about a centre figure consisting of a handsome brass bed made up as if for occupancy, the carefully folded-back covers revealing immaculate and downy blankets with pink borders, the whole suggestive of warmth and comfort throughout the most rigorous winter season.

“Catchy—­on a day like this!” suggested the druggist, with a chuckle.  “I’ll admit they gave me the key for my own windows.”

Richard’s gaze followed the other’s glance and rested on piles of scarlet flannel chest-protectors, flanked by small brass tea-kettles with alcohol lamps beneath.

“We carry a side line of spirit-lamp stuff,” explained the dealer.  “It sells well this time of year.  Got to keep track of the popular thing.  Afternoon teas are all the go among the women of this town now.  The hardware’s the only other place they can get these—­and they don’t begin to keep the variety we do.”

Richard congratulated the dealer on his window.  Lingering by it, his hand on the door, he said: 

“I noticed Benson’s as I came by, and I see now the force of what you say about window display.  I’m not sure I can tell what was in their windows.”

“Nor anybody else,” declared the druggist, chuckling, “unless he went with a notebook and made an inventory.  Since the old man died last year the windows have been a hodgepodge of stuff that attracts nobody.  It’s merely an index to the way the place is running behind.  Young Benson doesn’t know how to buy nor how to sell; he’ll never succeed.  The store began to go down when the old man got too feeble to take the whole responsibility.  Hugh began to overstock some departments and understock others.  It’s not so much lack of capital that’ll be responsible for Hugh’s failure when it comes—­and I guess it’s not far off—­as it is lack of business experience.  Why, he’s got so little trade he’s turned off half his salespeople; and you know that talks!”

It did indeed.  It talked louder now in the light of the druggist’s shrewd commentaries than it had when Benson had spoken of his “short force.”  Richard wondered just how short it was, that the proprietor could not venture to leave for even a few hours.

He drove on thoughtfully.  He wanted to go back and look those windows over again, wanted to go through the whole store, but recognized that though he could have done this when he first arrived, he could not go back and do it now without exciting his friend’s suspicion that sympathy was his motive.

He turned about at a point far short of the one he had intended to reach, and made record time back to the city, impelled by an odd wish he could hardly explain, to go by the windows of the great department stores of Kendrick & Company and examine their window displays.  Since he was ordinarily accustomed to select any other streets than those upon which these magnificent places of custom were situated, merely because he not only had no interest in them but a positive distaste for seeing his own name emblazoned—­though ever so chastely—­above their princely portals, it may be understood that an entirely new idea was working in his brain.