With a light heart he set out for a stationery store and purchased tablets, blank-books, pencils, erasers, and all the other articles required. The school books he could rent, which meant a big saving to his pocket. He dined well, if inexpensively, and at two o’clock made his way to Cummings and Wright’s. Neither of the partners was in, and it fell to the lot of Mr. Joseph Gillig to receive him. Joe Gillig was the single clerk in the employ; Miss Miller, who lived behind a glass partition, was a cashier and bookkeeper, which, as Tom learned later, is quite different from being a clerk. Joe was about twenty years of age, tall, thin, with a long neck in which his Adam’s apple did marvellous things as he talked. Joe had a good-natured, homely countenance lighted by a pair of nice, if somewhat sleepy, brown eyes and marred by an incipient moustache which, to Joe’s distress, was coming out red. “They didn’t look for you till four,” he said in greeting. “They’re both out now. Want to look over the place? What you got in the bundle?” “Overalls,” replied Tom. “Mr. Cummings said I’d better bring a pair.” “Right-o! Wait till I wait on that guy and I’ll show you over the shop.” The “guy” was hard to suit in the matter of a rip-saw and Tom had several minutes to wait. The hardware store was rather narrow, but made up for that by being interminably deep. Counters ran along each side, set here and there with showcases. A row of supporting pillars of iron stretched lengthwise of the store in the middle and about them were clustered such articles of trade as wheelbarrows, garden hose, fire extinguishers, and step-ladders, for Cummings and Wright didn’t confine themselves to the ordinary stock of hardware. At the rear of the store a door led to an alley, and there was a window on each side of the doorway. The office was a railed-off enclosure in one corner here, while Miss Gertrude Miller was enshrined in a box-like structure of imitation mahogany and glass, into which the belts of the cash carriers ran and where she made change while presiding over the firm’s books. Tom was duly presented to Miss Miller by Joe and rather shyly shook hands with her. She had a good deal of red-brown hair and a pair of soft grey eyes and was undeniably pretty, a fact which added to Tom’s embarrassment, since pretty young ladies were things he had had little to do with. He was glad when Joe, explaining everything as he went along, led the way down the flight of dark stairs on the other side and landed him in a cellar which occupied the entire space under the store. Here there was a packing room at the rear, coal bins, and a heater whose future conduct, Tom gathered, would be under his supervision. The rest of the cellar held stock too heavy or bulky to keep above, except that at the far end, partly under the sidewalk, a good-sized room was partitioned off. Here Cummings and Wright conducted a plumbing, steam-fitting, and tinsmithing business. There was a separate entrance