, and in
puffed Jeffries, solicitous as a fussy old bird with a new family.

"You're a lot better, ain't you?" cried he, before he had
looked at her. "Oh, yes, you'll be all right. And you'll have
a lovely time with Mr. Gideon. He's a perfect gentleman--knows
how to treat a lady. . . . The minute I laid eyes on you I
said to myself, said I, 'Jeffries, she's a mascot.' And you
are, my dear. You'll get us the order. But you mustn't talk
business with him, you understand?"

"Yes," said Susan, wearily.

"He's a gentleman, you know, and it don't do to mix business
and social pleasures. You string him along quiet and ladylike
and elegant, as if there wasn't any such things as cloaks or
dresses in the world. He'll understand all right. . . . If
you land the order, my dear, I'll see that you get a nice
present. A nice dress--the one we're going to lend you--if he
gives us a slice. The dress and twenty-five in cash, if he
gives us all. How's that?"

"Thank you," said Susan. "I'll do my best."

"You'll land it. You'll land it. I feel as if we had it with
his O. K. on it."

Susan shivered. "Don't--don't count on me too much," she said
hesitatingly. "I'm not in very good spirits, I'm sorry to say."

"A little pressed for money?" Jeffries hesitated, made an
effort, blurted out what was for him, the business man, a giddy
generosity. "On your way out, stop at the cashier's. He'll
give you this week's pay in advance." Jeffries hesitated,
decided against dangerous liberality. "Not ten, you
understand, but say six. You see, you won't have been with us
a full week." And he hurried away, frightened by his prodigality,
by these hysterical impulses that were rushing him far from the
course of sound business sense. "As Jones says, I'm a generous
old fool," he muttered. "My soft heart'll ruin me yet."

Jeffries sent Mary Hinkle home with Susan to carry the dress
and hat, to help her make a toilet and to "start her off
right." In the hour before they left the store there was
offered a typical illustration of why and how "business" is
able to suspend the normal moral sense and to substitute for it
a highly ingenious counterfeit of supreme moral obligation to
it. The hysterical Jeffries had infected the entire personnel
with his excitement, with the sense that a great battle was
impending and that the cause of the house, which was the cause
of everyone who drew pay from it, had been intrusted to the