tip of his youth like a swallow's wing. It remained with him
as a little, far spark; it seemed as if a dream was about to spin itself
out from it. He went around that way several times on his evening walks
in hopes that he might meet her again.

As though the spark had lightened a little of the blank unrecognition
with which the city met him, he was seen that day and in no unfriendly
aspect by "our Mr. Croker" of Siegel Brothers. The running gear of a
great concern like the Household Emporium pressed, in the days of
Peter's apprenticeship, unequally at times on its employees, and the
galled spot of the canned goods department was Blinders the bundle boy.
His other name was Horace and he was chiefly remarkable for pimples
which he seemed to think interesting, and for a state of active
resentment against anybody who gave him anything to do. The world for
Horace was a dark jungle full of grouches and pulls and privilege and
devious guile.

That the propensity which Peter had developed for inquiring every half
hour or so if he hadn't got that done yet, could be nothing else but a
cabal directed against Blinders' four dollars and a half a week, he was
convinced. In all the time that he could spare from his pimples, Horace
rehearsed a martyr's air designed to convey to Mr. Croker that though he
would suffer in silence he was none the less suffering. It being
precisely Mr. Croker's business to rap out grouches as an expert
mechanician taps defective cogs, it happened the day after Peter's
meeting with the girl that the worst hopes of Horace were realized.

"Aw, they're always a pickin' on me, Mr. Croker, that's what they are,
Mr. Croker," Horace defended himself, preparing to snivel if the
occasion seemed to demand it, by taking out his gum and sticking it on
the inside of his sleeve. "I can't handle 'em no faster, Mr. Croker."

"Not the way you go at it," Peter assured him. Anybody could have told
by the way he included Mr. Croker in his cheerfulness that there was
something between them. "You turn 'em over too many times and you use
too much paper and too much string." Suddenly Peter reddened with
embarrassment. "Not that that makes any difference to a big firm like
this," he apologized, "but in a small place every little counts." He
turned the package deftly and began to illustrate his method. "When
you're tying up calico with one hand and taking in eggs and butter with
the other and telling three people the price of th