“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.