The Homemaker · Part II · Chapter 8 (2/2)

He guessed that she had been horribly afraid of him, had heard perhaps from her husband that he was hard and cold, had dreaded the interview, and was now shaken by the extremity of her relief. He liked the gallant way she had swung straight into what she had feared.

To give her time to recover her self-control, he turned away from her and fumbled for a moment in his drawer to get out an employment blank, and then, as he held it in his hand and looked at its complicated questions, he realized that it was another of the big-city devices that did not hit his present situation. It would be foolish to give it to this woman, with its big-city rigmarole of inquiry⁠—“Give the last three places you worked; the address in full of last three employers; what was your position; reason for leaving,” etc., etc. He put it back in the drawer and instead asked the question to which he already knew the answer, “You have, I suppose, had no experience at all in business?”

But after all, he did not know the answer, it seemed, for she said, “Oh, yes, before I was married. My father keeps the biggest store in Brandville, up in the northern part of the state. It’s only a general store of course. Brandville is a small place. But I used to help him always. I liked it. And Father always made a good thing out of the business.”

Jerome was delighted, “Why, that’s the best sort of training,” he told her. “I always maintain that country-store methods are the ideal: where you know every customer personally, and all about their tastes and needs and pocketbooks. Did you really work there? Sell goods?”

“Yes, indeed. From the time I was a little girl⁠—after school in the afternoons and in vacation time. Father had a special little stepladder made for me so that I could carry it around and climb up to the shelves. I am the only child, you know. Father was proud that I liked to work with him.”

The vivid expression of her face as she told him of this childhood memory made Jerome Willing wonder that he could have thought she looked bad tempered. She looked like a live wire, that was all. And they never, in the nature of things, looked like feather beds.

“Well⁠ ⁠…” he said, to give himself time to think. “Well.⁠ ⁠…” He pulled an official-looking loose-leafed book over to him and began looking through it as though its contents had some connection with placing the applicant before him. But as a matter of fact the book contained nothing but some of his old reports from the Burnham days. He was turning over in his mind the best way to handle the situation. Should he put her in a slow-moving department like furniture or jewelry till she got used to things? That was the safe, conservative way. But he didn’t believe in the safe and conservative if a chance to move faster looked good. And at that it wouldn’t be much of a chance. If she didn’t pan out, he could move her back into the table linen, and no harm done.

He looked at her keenly to see the effect of his announcement. “I believe the thing for you,” he said, “is the Ladies’ Cloak-and-Suit department. I can put you right in as stock-girl till you get the hang of things. I always think stock-girl work is the finest sort of training for salesmanship.”

He saw by her expression that she did not know what a stock-girl was, that she did not realize what a privilege it was to be put at once in the coveted Cloak-and-Suits. But she rose at once. He liked the way she stood up, with one thrust of her powerful body. That was the way he liked to have salespeople get up, alertly, when a customer came in. It expressed willingness to serve and strength to give good service. The sale was half made, right there, he told his salespeople.

“I could go to work today,” she said. “I didn’t know⁠ ⁠… I hoped⁠ ⁠… perhaps. I put on a black dress to be ready in case you might have.⁠ ⁠…”

By George! She was ready to step right into it this minute. She slipped off her well-cut cloak and showed a severe black serge dress.

“Why, yes, if you like,” he said negligently. She took off her hat showing magnificent dark hair, streaked with gray.

He said casually, as if making talk, “I happened to see you watching our window-dresser at work as you came in. What was your impression of what he was doing?”

She said seriously, reflectively, “Well, Mr. McCarthy always seems to me to put too many things in his windows. I’ve thought a good many times that if he chose his things with more care and had fewer it might catch the eye better.”

“Well, Great Scott!” said Mr. Willing to himself in extreme surprise. Aloud he said impassively, “We haven’t talked wages yet. Stock-girls only get ten dollars a week to begin with, you know.”

“That is a great deal better than nothing,” she said firmly. “We have a few savings that will keep us going till I can get a start. And perhaps I may learn the business fairly quickly.”

“You bet your life you will,” said the proprietor of the store inaudibly. Aloud he said, “The cloakroom for salespeople is at the other end of the second floor. If you’ll put your things there and come back here, I’ll take you to your department and introduce you to Miss Flynn.”

When Jerome Willing came back to his office he stood for a while motionless, frowning down at his desk. “Yes, of course it was preposterous,” he told himself. He’d known her less than half an hour⁠—all the same he’d backed those crazy hunches of his before⁠—it had paid him to play his hunches! And if something like that did pan out⁠ ⁠… he fell once more into a reverie. She was just the kind of woman he was looking for, mature, with a local following, somebody the women of the town trusted. He could hear their voices plain, “Ask Mrs. Knapp to step here a minute, won’t you please? She has such good taste, I’d trust her judgment.⁠ ⁠…” And she’d be tied up so tight with a sick husband and family of children there’d be no chance of someone snatching her away and marrying her just after he’d taught her the job. It would be fun to teach somebody who wanted to learn. Creative work⁠—it always came back to that if you were going to do anything first-rate. You took raw material and shaped it with your own intelligence. If only she might be the raw material! If she turned out to have only a little capacity to study and get information out of books as well as the character and personality he was pretty sure she had. Wilder dreams had come true. His thoughts ran on again to the future of the store⁠ ⁠… with a competent manager keeping the wheels and cogs running smoothly⁠ ⁠… with him to do the buying⁠ ⁠… small lots at a time⁠ ⁠… every fortnight⁠ ⁠… quick sales⁠ ⁠… rapid turnovers that made low profits possible. With Nell handling the advertising campaign as only an intelligent college woman could, with just the right adaptation of those smart modern methods of hers to this particular small town they were serving. She was a first-rater, Nell was! It always had been fun to work with her even before they were married! And what a lark to work with her now! Good thing for Nell too! It had been asking a great deal of a real, sure-enough businesswoman like Nell to give it all up for Kinder, Küche, and Kirche. Nell had been willing, had been happy, had loved having the babies, had made them all happy. But now the children were both going to school it stood to reason she’d find time hang heavy on her hands, whipstitch that she was! And life in a small town was Hades if you didn’t have lots of work to do in spite of the big lawns and comfortable roomy homes. As far as that went, life anywhere was Hades if you didn’t have a job your size. You could see Nell had thought of all that (though she had been too good a sport to speak of it) by the way she had grabbed at this chance to get back into the old work, the work she’d loved so, and done so well at Burnham’s. Now if this Mrs. Knapp would only come through!

He brought himself up short again.⁠ ⁠… What a kid he was to let his imagination reel it off like this⁠—but a minute later he was thinking how he and Nell would enjoy giving an apt pupil steers, showing her how to use a microscope in fabric tests, how to know the right points of a well-made garment, how to handle her girls as she got along to executive work.⁠ ⁠… Oh, well, probably it was only a pipe dream⁠—and he knew enough to keep it to himself.

The clock in the National Bank opposite began striking. Jerome glanced at it and saw with astonishment that the hands pointed to twelve o’clock. Time to go home to lunch. As he got his hat and coat, he was wondering whether he had wasted a forenoon or whether perhaps on the contrary.⁠ ⁠…