“Well,” said Mrs. Peel, beaming at the compliment, “I always have held that it pays to treat folks fair and square, leastway in the long run. That fellow down to Washington Hills is doin’ pretty well now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he got into trouble before many years are gone. Folks don’t mind being cheated for awhile, but they get tired of it in the end. There was a man came here last Fall with a lot of signs he wanted me to buy; cards, they were, that you put in the window and around the store. Awfully pretty, too; looked like pictures, most. But I didn’t take to them. Mostly they was signs like ‘Our Prices can’t be Beat’ and ‘As good as Any, Better’n Many’ and ‘Our Prices are the Lowest in Town.’ Well, course that last was true enough, because this is the only store here, but most of them was sort of prevaricating. I told the man so. I said if he had any real honest signs to fetch ’em out and I’d look at ’em. But, if you’ll believe it, he didn’t have one! My husband used to say that you could cheat a man once, and maybe twice, but you couldn’t cheat him the third time because he wouldn’t give you a chance. And I guess that’s about the way it is. I’ll get a nice big piece of cardboard, sir, and the marking pot.” Chub took particular pains with that sign, ruling his lines and spacing his letters with a pencil before he set to work with the brush and the lampblack. And when it was finished it certainly looked fine. “There,” said Chub, holding it out, “that isn’t so bad, is it? I’ve seen signs right in the windows of our stores at home that didn’t beat that much. That capital F looks sort of wobbly, but you wouldn’t notice it, I think.” “It’s perfectly splendid!” said Harry, admiringly. And Mrs. Peel, who had watched the lettering with an almost breathless interest, fluttered off, in quite a tremor of excited pleasure, to find her spectacles. “Looks just like it was printed on a printing-machine,” she exclaimed, when her glasses had been adjusted and she was alternately trying the effects of looking through them and over them. “I’m very much obliged, sir. I--I think I’ll put it in the window and see how it looks from outside.” So, with Chub assisting, she tacked it to the back of one of the window shelves, and cleared the one below so that the inscription should not be missed. Then she hurried out to the sidewalk and viewed it with her head perked about like a bird’s. Chub and Harry joined her and observed the effect with satisfaction, and Chub, to Mrs. Peel’s delight, discovered that it could be read from the corner of the street if you found just the right spot to stand. They made a few modest purchases for the boat’s larder and then bade Mrs. Peel good-by.