“Been to lunch?” Mr. Spencer inquired. “Better go now. Take your full hour. When you get back report to me.” Halting on the other side of the street I looked up at the sign across the front of the building. What had appeared to me to be a general store was the chief premium station of a widely known company that claimed to do business on a profit-sharing basis. Reading the advertisements of this firm I had always set them down as a set of crooks catering to the American craving to get something for nothing. So I had engaged to work for crooks! CHAPTER IV AGAINST A RUSH OF THE HERD On my return from lunch Mr. Spencer escorted me to a counter marked “Men’s Department” and introduced me to the head of stock, Nora Joyce, a neat young girl with serious blue eyes. After introducing me to the other girls in the department Nora gave me the stand next to her own and set about explaining the work to me. There were one hundred and fifty different kinds of articles behind that counter, all for masculine use. The value of each article was reckoned in certificates instead of dollars and cents. It takes five coupons to make a certificate and there are half-coupons and quarter-coupons. It was all very confusing at first. Noting the dexterity with which the girls counted the little slips of paper, the ease with which they recognized each kind by its color, and calculated their value, seemed to me nothing short of marvellous. While Nora was at lunch and while I was immersed in a sample package of coupons, struggling to impress their color and value on my eyes and mind, I suddenly realized that some one on the other side of the counter was speaking to me. Glancing up, my eyes encountered those of my first customer. “If you can spare the time,” she said, with an accent on spare, “I would like a box of men’s hose—black.” She was an unusually handsome young woman and stunningly dressed. On my asking what size she wished she stared at me as though I had made an impertinent inquiry. “They are for my husband,” she haughtily informed me, evidently expecting that to settle the matter. She could not tell me the size of her husband’s shoe, the size of his glove, what he weighed, nor his height. After many questions she finally divulged that he was not much shorter than she and that he was quite thin. The price of that box of socks was seven hundred and fifty coupons. Imagine my feelings when that first customer of mine handed me one hundred coupons and the balance in quarter-coupons. And all the while I counted them she stood first on one foot, then on the other, sighed heavily, and in other ways made me aware of her great impatience. Before I was half through she stalked over to the manager’s office and demanded to know how much longer she was to be kept waiting for her purchase.