ain, and though she wasn't "taking any," and often
boxed his ears, she made "dates" with him for dance halls after
business hours, especially one called Dreamland, which was too lovely
for "wuyds." There were movies, and you could dance till 'most
morning. Real swell gentlemen, who wore red badges to show "they was
all right," came up and asked if they could "interdooce" other gents
to you, in case you'd come in alone and didn't have friends. But Sadie
always did have friends.

The red-haired girl, who had from the first been a haunting mystery
for Win, was in the toy department. Her name was Lily Leavitt, and--as
Sadie had already told Win--she was "chucking herself" at Earl Usher's
head. At first Miss Leavitt "lamped" Miss Child "something awful." But
on the English girl's third Toy day a thing happened which converted
the enemy into a friend--an all too devoted friend.

It was now so near Christmas that in the department devoted to toys
and games you could not have placed a sheet of foreign notepaper
between mothers (with a sprinkling of aunts and grandmas) unless you
wanted it torn to pieces before you could count "One!" Children were
massed together in a thick, low-growing underbrush, and of their
species only babies were able to rise, like cream, to the top. The
air, or rather the atmosphere (since all the air had been breathed
long ago), was to the nerves what tow is to fire. Nobody could be in
it for ten minutes without wanting to hit somebody else or push
somebody else's child, little brute! out of the way.

What with heat, the rage for buying, impatience to get in and
impatience to get out, the fragrance of pine and holly decorations,
the smell of hot varnish and hot people and cheap furs, the babble of
excited voices and shrieks of exhausted children, it was the true
Christmas spirit. Peter Rolls's store in general, and the toy
department in particular, were having what would be alluded to later
in advertisements as an "unprecedented success."

Before Win came the folding chairs for "assistants" had all been
broken or out of order. But (no doubt, said Sadie) because of some
lingering suspicion that she might, after all, be an anti-sweat spy,
the springs or hinges were mysteriously repaired throughout the
department. By law any girl could sit down. By unwritten law she
mustn't, yet there were the chairs as good as gold and fresh as paint.
They were even pointed out to Win, but in the whirl of things the
m