was defenseless. He could not dodge them. Anybody could come up and
ask him anything--and did. And while he could learn something about the
new leathers, still it was difficult for him to remember the Long Island
Railroad time-table well enough to reply instantly when an irate shopper
snapped at him, "Do you know what's the next train for Hempstead?"

The most _difficile_ woman in a shoe-store has at least a definite,
tangible foot to fit. But the holiday crowd were buying presents for
persons of whom Father knew nothing--though the shoppers expected him to
know everything, from the sizes of their wrists to their tastes in
bill-folds. They haggled and pushed and crowded; they wanted it to be
less expensive, as well as more blessed, to give than to receive. He
spent twenty minutes in showing the entire line of diaries to one woman.
She apparently desired to make sure that they were all of them moral or
something of the sort. At the end of the time she sighed, "Oh dear, it
isn't time for the matinee even yet. Shopping is so hard." And oozed
away into the crowd.

Father had started his first day with a superior manner of knowing all
about leather and the ways of cranky customers. He ended it with a
depressed feeling that he knew nothing about anything, that he couldn't
keep up the holiday pace of the younger clerks--and that the assistant
buyer of the department had been watching him. He walked home with
strained, weary shoulders, but as he turned into the gloomy hallway
leading to their room he artificially brightened his expression, that he
might bring joy home to Mother, who would have been lonely and anxious
and waiting all day.

He pictured her as sitting there, hunched up, depressed. He would bounce
in with news of a good day. He tried the door carefully. Mother stood in
the middle of the floor, in a dream. In the dimness of the room the coal
fire shone through the front draught of the stove, and threw a faint
rose on her crossed hands. Taller she seemed, and more commanding. Her
head was back, her eyes sparkling. She was clean-cut and strong against
the unkempt walls.

"Why, Mother! You look so happy! What is it?"

"I'm going to help! I'm not going to be a lazybones. I've got a job,
too! In the toy-department at Regalberg's. And they are going to pay me
nine dollars a week. How's that for your stupid old woman?"

"Why--why--you don't need-- I don't know as I like--" began the
conventional old Father to whom w