With Mr. Croft, “Saint Peter’s Understudy,” it was more dangerous.  You had to beware of him.  If you were a “looker,” like Win, the best thing that could happen to you was never to come within eyeshot of Henry Croft.  He lived in the suburbs, was married, and the superintendent of a Sunday school.  His name was on all the charity lists.  He was so tall and thin and sprawling that he looked like a human hatrack, and his solemn circle of a face, surrounded with yellowish whiskers, had a sunflower effect.  He had written a book, “Week-Day Sermons by a Layman”; nevertheless, he was a terror.

There were, according to Sadie, girls in the store who were of no more use as saleswomen than baby alligators would have been, but they “gave the glad eye” to Mr. Croft, and accepted his flowers and invitations for moonlight motor rides.  Nearly every one knew, but nobody told.

What use?  Who was there to tell?  Croft was “up at the top and then some.”  Only Saint Peter himself stood above.  And who would dare complain to Saint Peter about his respectable right hand?  Even if there were any chance of getting near P.R., which there wasn’t.  He came mostly at night, as if it were a disgrace to show himself in a shop, even if it was his own.  If ever he did any “prowling” in business hours, it was with the understudy glued to his side.

As for “sweating” and “grinding” there wasn’t a cent’s worth of difference between Croft and Meggison, said Sadie.  Nevertheless, Win was feeling thankful, as the “L” train bees boomed through her brain, that at worst it was Mr. Meggison who had mysteriously summoned her, not Mr. Croft.

If only she could go to sleep and forget them both, and the trains and the cars and the man in the park and Miss Stein, who still had against her a “grouch.”  If only she could forget even big, blundering Ursus, who wanted to treat her to oyster stews that he couldn’t afford and take her to a dance hall next Sunday!  And Sadie, too, who knew such strange and awful things about the world and life, although she was so good.

But no.  Impossible to stop thinking, impossible to forget, impossible to sleep.  All New York seemed to be about her ears.  She could hear the frantic rush of everything which true New Yorkers love, and she could feel its sky-scrapers closing in around her like an unclimbable wall.  As she thought of the great, noisy city she saw it consisting entirely of vastly high towers, with inhabitants who spent their time in tearing about—­people who looked at her in the street as if she were not there, or, if she was, they would rather she were somewhere else.

She dared not picture the ship sailing for England nearly every day of the week.  If she were free to do what she liked—­or almost what she liked—­she would go at least as often as every Saturday to watch a big liner move out from the dock, just for the delicious torture of it.