“I mean just what I say.”

Mr. Schriven fell into a foxy fit of musing, and there rose before his mind the pale face and dragged, weary, listless look of a girl now standing at the ribbon counter.  “She’ll break down when hard work begins again,” he thought; “she’s giving way now with nothing much to do.  To be sure she has been here a long time, and has done her best and all that, but her day is past, and here’s plenty of young flesh and blood to fill her place.  This one is rather young, but she’s smart as a whip—­she’s full of mettle and is fresh and healthy-looking.  It won’t do to have pale girls around, for it gives cursed busybodies a chance to rant about women standing all day. (Out of the corner of his eye he measured Belle from head to foot.) She can stand, and stand it, too, for a long while.  She’s compact and stout.  She’s built right for the business.”  At last he said, aloud, “In case I should so far depart from my usual custom and make a place for you, as you suggest, what do you propose to charge for the services you rate so highly?”

“What you choose to give.”

“Well,” was the laughing answer, “there’s method in your madness.  Take that pen and write what I dictate.”

Belle wrote a few sentences in a dashing, but sufficiently legible hand.

“You will have to practice a little, and aim at distinctness and clearness.  That’s more than style in business,” Mr. Schriven continued deliberately, for the young creature was so delightfully fresh and original that he began to regard her as an agreeable episode in the dull August day.  “I’ll make a place for you, as you say, if you will come for three dollars a week and comply with the rules.  You are to do just as you are bid by those having charge of your department, and you had better keep on their right side.  You are not to come to me again, remember, unless I send for you,” he concluded, with his characteristic smile; “an event that you must not look forward to, for I assure you such interviews are rare in my experience.  Come next Monday at seven if you agree to these conditions.”

“I agree, and I thank you,” the girl promptly answered, her brilliant eyes glowing with triumph, for thoughts like these were in her mind:  “How I can crow over mamma and Millie, who said this very morning there was no use in trying!  Won’t it be delicious to hand papa enough money to pay the rent for a month!” No wonder the child’s face was radiant.

The thoughts of her employer were of quite a different character.  He gave her a look of bold admiration, and said familiarly, “By Jupiter, but you are a daisy!”

Belle’s manner changed instantly.  He caught a swift, indignant flash in her dark eyes, and then she laid her hand on the door-knob and said, with the utmost deference and distance of manner, “I will try to attend to the duties of my station in a way that will cause no complaint.  Good morning, sir.”