, in the history of Beagle and
Company, had there been a floorwalker who threw so much passion and zeal
into his task. The very hang of his coattails, even the erect carriage
of his back, the rubbery way in which his feet trod the aisles, showed
his sense of dignity and glamour. There seemed to be a great tradition
which enriched and upheld him. Mr. Beagle senior used to stand on
the little balcony at the rear of the main floor, transfixed with the
pleasure of seeing Gissing move among the crowded passages.
Alert, watchful, urbane, with just the ideal blend of courtesy and
condescension, he raised floorwalking to a social art. Female customers
asked him the way to departments they knew perfectly well, for the
pleasure of hearing him direct them. Business began to improve before he
had been there a week.

And how he enjoyed himself! The perfection of his bearing on the
floor was no careful pose: it was due to the brimming overplus of his
happiness. Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only
the unhappy are churlish in deportment. He was young, remember; and
this was his first job. His precocious experience as a paterfamilias had
added to his mien just that suggestion of unconscious gravity which is
so appealing to ladies. He looked (they thought) as though he had been
touched--but Oh so lightly!--by poetic sorrow or strange experience: to
ask him the way to the notion counter was as much of an adventure as
to meet a reigning actor at a tea. The faint cloud of melancholy that
shadowed his brow may have been only due to the fact that his new boots
were pinching painfully; but they did not know that.

So, quite unconsciously, he began to "establish" himself in his role,
just as an actor does. At first he felt his way tentatively and with
tact. Every store has its own tone and atmosphere: in a day or so he
divined the characteristic cachet of the Beagle establishment. He saw
what kind of customers were typical, and what sort of conduct they
expected. And the secret of conquest being always to give people
a little more than they expect, he pursued that course. Since they
expected in a floorwalker the mechanical and servile gentility of a
hired puppet, he exhibited the easy, offhand simplicity of a fellow
club-member. With perfect naturalness he went out of his way to assist
in their shopping concerns: gave advice in the selection of dress
materials, acted as arbiter in the matching of frocks and stockings. Hi