“Yes,” he continued, with the same abstracted air, his head upturned, “there’s a good place for hanging a big lamp, if there is one in the new lot, and there are spots where I can hang twenty or more smaller ones.  I will cover the side walls with stuffs and embroideries and put those long Italian settees against—­yes, Tweety-kins, it will come out all right.  It will make a splendid banquet hall!  And after the party we will leave it just so.  Fine, my child!  And I have an idea, too—­a brilliant idea.  Hans, ask Mr. Kling to be good enough to come up here!”

With the surrender of her Uncle Felix, Masie resumed her spinning around the room and kept it up until the father’s bald head showed clear above the top of the stairs.

“Masie has had one brilliant idea, Mr. Kling, and I have another.  I will tell you mine first.”  It was wonderful how thoroughly he understood the Dutchman.

“Vell, vot is it?” Otto had sniffed something unusual in the atmosphere and was on the defensive.  When there was only one to deal with he sometimes had his way; never when they were leagued together.

“I propose,” continued O’Day, “to turn this whole floor into the sort of a room one could live in—­like many of the great halls I have seen abroad—­and I think we have enough material to make a success of it, plenty of space in which to put everything where it belongs.  Leave that big chair where I have placed it, throw some rugs on the floor, nail the stuffs and tapestries to the walls, fasten the brackets and sconces and appliques on top of them, filled with candles, and hang the lanterns and church lamps to the rafters.  When I finish with it, you will have a room to which your customers will flock.”

Kling, bewildered, followed the play of O’Day’s fingers in the air as if he were already placing the ornaments and hangings with which his mind was filled.

“Vell, vot ve do vid de stuff dot’s comin’—­all dem sideboards and chairs and de pig tables?  Ve ain’t got de space.”

“Half of them will go here, and the balance we will pile away on the top floor.  When these are sold then we’ll bring down the others—­always keeping up the character of the room.  That is my idea.  What do you think of it?”

The shopkeeper hesitated, his fat features twisted in calculation.  Every move of his new salesman had brought him in double his money.  The placing of his goods so that a customer would be compelled to crawl over a table in order to see whether a chair had three whole legs or two, dust and darkness helping, had always seemed to him one of the tricks of the trade and not to be abandoned lightly.

“You mean dot ve valk ’round loose in de middle, and everyting is shoved back de Vall behind, so you can see it all over?”

Felix smothered a smile.  “Certainly, why not?”

“Vell, Mr. O’Day, I don’t know.”  Then, noticing the quickly drawn brows of his clerk’s face and the shadow of disappointment:  “Of course, ve can try it, and if it don’t vork ve do it over, don’t ve?”