During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and exchange stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the tactics of life.

“I says to ’im,” says Sadie, “ain’t you the fresh thing!  Who do you suppose I am, to be addressing such a remark to me?  And what do you think he says back to me?”

The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the answer is given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be used by each thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, man.

Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful defense means victory.

The curriculum of a department store is a wide one.  Perhaps no other college could have fitted her as well for her life’s ambition—­the drawing of a matrimonial prize.

Her station in the store was a favored one.  The music room was near enough for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the best composers—­at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for appreciation in the social world in which she was vaguely trying to set a tentative and aspiring foot.  She absorbed the educating influence of art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of adornments that are almost culture to women.

The other girls soon became aware of Nancy’s ambition.  “Here comes your millionaire, Nancy,” they would call to her whenever any man who looked the role approached her counter.  It got to be a habit of men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric squares.  Nancy’s imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted.  Many men thus came to display their graces before her.  Some of them may have been millionaires; others were certainly no more than their sedulous apes.  Nancy learned to discriminate.  There was a window at the end of the handkerchief counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the shoppers in the street below.  She looked and perceived that automobiles differ as well as do their owners.

Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and wooed her across the counter with a King Cophetua air.  When he had gone one of the girls said: 

“What’s wrong, Nance, that you didn’t warm up to that fellow.  He looks the swell article, all right, to me.”

“Him?” said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van Alstyne Fisher smile; “not for mine.  I saw him drive up outside.  A 12 H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur!  And you saw what kind of handkerchiefs he bought—­silk!  And he’s got dactylis on him.  Give me the real thing or nothing, if you please.”