"Bless the boy, I don't know. You may not be worth anything. You may be having more now than you're worth," she said teasingly. "Not my Jimmie," said Mrs. Wilkes a little indignantly. "My Jimmie"--and here she entered into a pæan of praise of Jimmie. Then Betty continued: "And Mr. Jones will have a little check which will probably come in very handily for--furniture?" she said, looking at Elsie. Elsie's only answer was a blush. "And you, Mrs. Larsen, will probably have a check from Mr. Larsen, every three months, which will help, at any rate, to give Mr. Larsen the protection for his old age that he has so thoroughly earned." Mrs. Larsen was completely won over, and, to my surprise, she burst out crying bitterly. Betty quietly put her arm around her waist and led her upstairs. They came down in a few minutes, Mrs. Larsen red-eyed, but smiling; and we immediately started the question of handling toys for Christmas. The women were all strongly in favor of it, so we decided to have toys for Christmas. I didn't know the first thing about toys; I didn't know where to buy them; I didn't know what we ought to sell. But, as we were going to sell them, I hoped that my luck would be with me. After they had gone Betty told me that Mrs. Larsen had said, when they were upstairs, that she had been urging Larsen to find another job, as she felt he wouldn't make any progress with me. "Perhaps that's why he has looked worried sometimes lately, and hasn't seemed to work with the same delight that he did when I first bought the business," I said. And then it was that Betty had put her hands to her hips, cocked her head impishly one side, and thrown her taunt at me: "Well, what have you to say now?" CHAPTER XXVIII GETTING NEW BUSINESS The next day, I wrote to Hersom, the salesman for Bates & Hotchkin, and asked him to give me the names of one or two good firms from whom to buy toys. I had just mailed the letter when he came into the store. He was a nice fellow, was Hersom, and I had found that, whenever I left anything to him, he gave me a square deal. Indeed, he had got so that he was almost one of the family when he got inside the place. He gave me the names of two New York concerns, the manager of one of which he said he knew personally, and to him he gave me a letter of introduction. I decided that Betty and I would go to New York the next week and pick out a stock of toys. We would plunge on a hundred dollars' worth--perhaps a little more--and see what happened.