Later on orders came in frequently by mail from the towns around, proving that the department had acquired more than a purely local fame. In Amesville the grammar school boys followed the lead of their older brothers in most things and they were quick to emulate them in patronising Cummings and Wright’s. Cummings and Wright’s, in fact, received from the high school a sort of official recognition. It was the first of the hardware stores to advertise in the school monthly, although another dropped into line later, and the students, following the _Brown-and-Blue’s_ slogan, “Patronise our advertisers,” quickly adopted it as a place to make purchasers of not only athletic goods, but other supplies as well. Boys became so accustomed to going there that by the middle of spring the store was a general meeting-place, a sort of high-school headquarters. It was Sidney who first suggested to Tom that the latter offer to post school notices in the window. After that, and more especially when the athletic activities were at their height, one could always find one or more bulletins pasted against the glass there, such as, “A. H. S. B. A. Practice to-day at three-thirty sharp. No cuts.” Or, “A. H. S. T. T. Candidates for the Track Team report at four o’clock Wednesday.” Following up this idea, Tom began posting the scores of the baseball games throughout the country, both professional and collegiate. Mr. Cummings had had a carpenter divide the window at the right of the doorway in two with a neat oak panel and Tom had some twenty-five square feet of space therein in which to display his goods. At first Joe Gillig dressed the window for him, for Tom doubted his own ability, but presently the latter did it himself and managed to make a far more attractive display than Joe by not crowding his goods and by confining each week the display to some one branch of sport or some one article in variety. When, as happened late in the spring, a sporting goods house in the East sent a demonstrator to exhibit a home exercising outfit in the window, the store and Tom’s department in particular received a whole lot of free advertising from the papers, while the crowds that assembled daily to watch the good-looking young athlete in the window go through his motions with the exerciser made many other merchants along Main Street green with envy. But this was in May, and several things happened before that that should be set down here. Tom had hardly hoped for a raise of more than one dollar in his weekly wages and so when Mr. Cummings duly announced to him that beginning with the first day of April his salary would be just doubled Tom’s surprise was even greater than his delight. “It don’t seem as if I was worth that much yet, sir,” he said doubtfully. “It isn’t as if I was here all day, you see.”