"What's the matter?" says I.

"Matter!" he snarls. "Why, the miserable four-flushers have turned me down-that's all. Read that!"

I took the letter he handed me. It was type-wrote on a big sheet of paper, with a printed head, readin': "Ormstein & Meyer, Hardware and Tools. Manufacturers of Eureka Adjustable Aluminum Window Screens." And this is what it said:

_Mr. J. H. Jacobs_,

_Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store, Ostable, Ma.s.s._

_Dear Sir_: Regarding your application for Ostable County ag'y Eureka Adjustable Aluminum Window Screens, would say that we have decided to give ag'y to party named Geo. Lentz, who will give entire time to it instead making it a side issue as per your conversation with our Mr. Meyer. Regretting that we cannot do business together in this regard, but trusting for a continuance of your valued patronage, we remain

Yours truly,

_Ormstein & Meyer._

Dic. M-L. G.

"Now what do you think of that?" snaps Jim, mad as he could stick. "What do you think of that!"

"Well," says I, slow, "I think that, speakin' as a man in the crosstrees, it looks as if you and me wouldn't furnish screens for the West Ostable Hotel."

He half shut his eyes and stared at me hard.

"Oh!" says he. "That's what you think, hey?"

"Why, yes," I says. "Don't you?"

"No!" he sings out, so loud that 'Dolph Cahoon, our new clerk, who'd been half asleep in the lee of the gingham and calico dressgoods counter, jumped up and stepped on the store cat. The cat beat for port down the back stairs, whoopin' comments, and 'Dolph begun measurin'

calico as if he was wound up for eight days.

"No!" says Jacobs again, soon as the cat's opinion of 'Dolph had faded away into the cellar-"No!" he says. "I don't think it at all. We may not sell Eureka Adjustables to that hotel, but we'll sell screens to it-and don't you forget that. I'll make it my business to get that contract if I don't do anything else. I'm no quitter, if you are!"

"Nary quit!" says I. "I'll stand by to pull whatever rope I can; but it does seem to me that this agent, whoever he is, will have an eye on that hotel. And, accordin' to your accounts, he's got better goods than we have."

"Maybe. But if he's a better salesman than I am he'll have to go some to prove it. I'll beat him, by fair means or foul, just to get even. That's a promise, Skipper, and I call you to witness it."

"Wonder who this Geo. Lentz is," says I. "'Tain't a Cape name, that's sure."

"I don't care who he is. I only wish he'd have the nerve to come into this store-that's all. He'd go out on the fly-I tell you that! And that's another promise."

Maybe 'twas; but, if so-However, I'm a little mite ahead of myself; fust come fust served, as the youngest boy said when the father undertook to thrash the whole family. The fust thing that happened after our talk and the Eureka folks' letter was Jim Henry's goin' over to West Ostable to see Parkinson, the hotel man. He went in the new runabout automobile that he'd bought since he got back from the West, and was gone pretty nigh all day. When he got back he was hopeful-I could see that.

"Well," says he, "I've laid the cornerstone. I've talked the Nonesuch"-that was the brand of screen we carried-"to beat the cars; and we'll have a show to get in a bid, at any rate. It'll be six weeks more afore the contract's given out, and meantime yours truly will be on the job. If our old college chum, G. Lentz, Esquire, don't hustle he'll be left at the post."

"What sort of a chap is this Parkinson man?" I asked.

"Oh, he's all right; big and fat and good-natured. A good feller, I should say. Likes automobilin', too, and thinks my car is a winner."

"Married, is he?" says I.

"No; he's a widower. That's a good thing, too."

"Why? What's that got to do with it?"

"A whole lot. If he was married I'd have to take Mrs. P. along on our auto rides; and-let alone the fact that there wouldn't be room-she'd want to talk scenery instead of screens. Women and business don't mix.

That's one reason why I've never married."

I couldn't help thinkin' of some of the hints he'd been heavin' at me-the "home" remarks and so on-but I never said nothin'.

This was a Tuesday. And when, on Thursday afternoon, I walked into the store, after havin' had dinner at the Poquit, I found 'Dolph Cahoon-our new clerk I've mentioned already-leanin' graceful and easy over the candy counter and talkin' with a young woman I'd never seen afore. I didn't look at her very close, but I got a sort of general observation as I walked aft to the post-office department; and, sifted down, that observation left me with remembrances of a blue serge jacket and skirt, cut clipper fashion and fittin' as if they was built for the craft that was in 'em; a little blue hat-a real hat; not a velvet tar barrel upside down-with a little white gull's wing on it; brown eyes and brown hair, and a white collar and shirtwaist. I didn't stop to hail, you understand; but I judged that the stranger's home port wa'n't Ostable or any of the Cape towns. Ostable outfitters don't rig 'em that way.

I come in the side door, and 'Dolph or his customer didn't notice me.

The young woman was lookin' into the showcase; and, as for 'Dolph, he wouldn't have noticed the President of the United States just then. He was twirlin' his red mustache with the hand that had the rock-crystal ring on the finger of it, and his talk was a sort of sugared purr-at least, that's the nighest description of it that I can get at.

I set down in my chair at the postmaster's desk and begun to turn over some papers. Mary had gone to dinner and Jim Henry was away in his auto; so I was all alone. I turned over the papers, but I couldn't get my mind on 'em-the talk outside was too prevailin', so to speak.

'Dolph was doin' the heft of it. The young woman's answers was short and not too interested. 'Dolph was remarkin' about the weather and what a dull winter we'd had, and how glad he'd be when spring really set in and the summer folks begun to come-and so on.

"Really," says he, and though I couldn't see him I'd have bet that the mustache and ring was doin' business-"Really," he says, "there's a dreadful lack of cultivated society in this town, Miss-er-"

He held up here, waitin', I judged, for the young woman to give her name. However, she didn't; so he purred ahead.

"There's so few folks," he says, "for a young feller like me-used to the city-to a.s.sociate with. This is a jay place all right. I'm only here temporary. I shall go back to Brockton in the fall, I guess."

_I_ guessed he'd go sooner; but I kept still.

"Are you goin' to remain here for some time?" he asked.

"Possibly," says the girl.

"I'm 'fraid you'll find it pretty dull, won't you?"

"Perhaps."

"I should be glad to introduce you to the folks that are worth knowin'.

Are you fond of dancin'? There's a subscription ball at the town hall to-night."

This was what a lawyer'd call a leadin' question, seemed to me; but the answer didn't seem to lead to anything warmer than the North Pole. The young woman said, "Indeed?" and that was all.

"I'm perfectly dippy about waltzin'," says 'Dolph. "By the way, won't you have some confectionery? These chocolates are pretty fair."

I riz to my feet. I don't mind bein' a philanthropist once in a while, but I like to do my philanthropin' fust-hand. And them chocolates sold for sixty cents a pound!

I had my hand on the doork.n.o.b. Just as I turned it I heard the young woman say, crisp and cold as a fresh cuc.u.mber:

"Pardon me, but will your employer be in soon? If not I'll call again-when he is in."

"You won't have to," says I, steppin' out of the post-office room and walkin' over toward the candy counter. "One of him's in now. 'Dolph, you can put them chocolates back in the case. Oh, yes-and you might a.s.sociate yourself with the broom and waltz out and sweep the front platform. It's been needin' your cultivated society bad."