What a tremendous lot of different lines there are which a retail store can handle--even if only for a brief season each year--and make some profit out of them! But you sure do have to keep on the jump to think of them all. I know my store would never have been handling the number of lines that we had then, if it hadn't been for the Monday meetings. These meetings seemed to tone up all of us, and, once we had gone on record to do something, we seemed to strive hard to live up to it, so that we wouldn't let the other fellows have the laugh on us, which they certainly would if we had fallen down. It was at that meeting that I suggested a motto. It was this: "Eternal humping is the price of Success." I asked Charlie Martin what he thought of it. He said, "It's fine, and if you used the word _vigilance_ instead of _humping_--why you would be only about twenty-five hundred years behind the fellow who originated it!" The day Betty was to return I was at the station at 3:30, although her train wasn't due 'till 3:55--and then the train was fifteen minutes late! How I fumed and fretted at the inefficiency of our railroad service, but I forgot all that when the train finally puffed into the station, and Betty tripped out of the car, right into my arms. I can't express the happiness I experienced--all the hundred and one things we had to talk over--all the foolish little stunts we did, just like a couple of kids--but both of us supremely happy! I extend my heartfelt commiseration to those poor benighted wights who don't possess a wife. CHAPTER XXXVII WOOLTON COMES TO TOWN The next morning, while I was in the middle of breakfast, the telephone rang. I jumped up to answer it and recognized Barlow's voice. "That you, Black?" he said. "Yes," I said. "Betty's home: she came yesterday!" "Glad to hear it," he replied. "I wish you would drop in at the store this morning, if you can; will you?" "Sure," I answered, but felt somewhat disappointed. He seemed to treat Betty's return as a mere nothing! When I joined Betty at the table I told her about my automobile arrangement with him. She seemed very pleased at that. Betty thought a lot of Barlow, and I thought more of him than I used to. I had considered him as an old duffer; but I had learned that he was a quiet, thoughtful, progressive business man. As soon as I got into his store he beckoned me to the rear. "Say, Black, you've got some vacuum cleaners," he said; "I'm not handling those things, and I wish you'd send one up to the wife. She's always said she wanted one. I'll pay you now--how much?" I told him the cost price and suggested that he pay me ten per cent. over that, which he said was perfectly agreeable. Then he said, "I couldn't help laughing the other day. Martin seemed to be quite worried." "Worried? What about? He was all right last night."