CHAPTER X

PETER ROLLS’S LITTLE WAYS

Something strange had happened in the ground-floor bargain square.  The wasps’ nest had suddenly turned into a beehive.  The buzz of rage had lulled to the hum of industry.  Fred Thorpe, the “aisle manager,” was blessed with the tact which only some secret sympathy or great natural kindness can put into a man; and it had kept him at a distance from Miss Stein that morning.  He knew the inner history of that particular bargain sale, and there were reasons why he should understand with peculiar acuteness the humiliation she had been doomed to endure.  His presence on the scene would make matters worse, and he had obliterated himself as much as possible.

Nevertheless he saw all that went on in that direction, and the sudden and remarkable change which took place immediately after the tall English girl’s arrival amazed him.  He did not know what to make of it, but it was so evidently a change for the better, and the time before the sale was so short, that he decided to sink conventions and let the saleswomen alone.

The floorwalker had plenty of other things to keep him busy, but his subself eyed the strenuous, mysterious preparations for the coming two-hour sale of blouses, sashes, and ladies’ fancy neckwear.  Five minutes ago the unfortunate stock (which finished the latest chapter of Stein-Horrocks-Westlake-Thorpe inner history) had laid in neglected heaps on the four counters which walled in the hollow square.  Miss Stein and her five companions had confined their energies to examining labels, and that in a perfunctory manner, a mere cloak for feverish whisperings.  The sale was doomed to failure—­had been doomed from the moment that Mr. Horrocks, the manager of the department (who was also a sub-buyer), had “dumped” a disastrous purchase from a bankrupt sale onto the girl whom every one knew he had jilted for Miss Westlake.  There was far more in it than that; an intricate intrigue of shop life.  But so much at least was common property in the department; and the elevation of Miss Westlake, the humiliation of Miss Stein, could be seen by all, for Miss Westlake close by was selling the most entrancing new fichus which had begun the day with a succes fou.

No use advising Miss Stein to buck up and do her best.  Anything Fred Thorpe could say on the subject would be bitterly misconstrued.  He realized that her conception of the part to play was to make the worst of things instead of the best and snatch what satisfaction she could from a flare-up.  That was what Horrocks wanted, of course, but she was past caring, or so it seemed until the sudden change took place after the appearance of the new girl.