"It wouldn't have to be fit--I'll trim bonnets for ladies before I go back to fishin'," said Peter, "and thank you for the chance." Peter passed out with his crew. Mrs. Pentle turned to Mr. Duncan. "So that's settled! I shall telephone you, Mr. Duncan, about Captain Crudden's place in my store--the work will not be disagreeable." Mr. Duncan and Fred watched Mrs. Pentle's car racing up the street; and then Fred said: "Mr. Duncan, Peter didn't look like any magazine cover of a hero I've seen lately, but--sitting there on that bench awhile ago--did you take a look at Mrs. Pentle's face while he was telling the story of that wreck?" Mr. Duncan looked at his old bookkeeper. "Reef down your imagination, Fred. She's a woman who likes to manage things and to do good; but what I'm afraid she'll do now will be to ruin the makings of a smart young skipper with her soft job ashore." Mr. Henston, the manager of Pentle's, brought Peter Crudden to Flaxley, the head shipper. "Flaxley, you are to break in this man," said Henston, "and he's to go on the pay-roll at twenty dollars per week." Flaxley wondered why a new man, who was to be only a shipper's helper, should go on the payroll for twenty dollars a week; and he wondered yet more why Henston should be telling him about the pay-roll, which was made up in the office and not in the shipping-room. He wondered, too, why the manager himself should take the trouble to introduce the new man. "You needn't make it easy for him on my account," whispered Henston, going out. Flaxley had seen a lot of things happen in Pentle's, where he had been so long that, when Mrs. Pentle wanted to know about anything that went back beyond the memory of even the ancient cashier Herrick, she would send down for Flaxley. He was no older than Herrick, but he had started to work in the store younger. Flaxley was like something that went with the store. He had privileges; and he did not like Henston and would not have minded telling him so, but that he had great respect for Mrs. Pentle and thought--what many more in the store thought--that Henston was dressing his windows so as to catch Mrs. Pentle's eye, and some day--you can't tell about women, especially young widows--some day Henston might marry her. Flaxley looked Peter over and rather liked his make-up, and pointed out a big dry-goods case and told him what he wanted done. Flaxley saw the new man hook into the box, which weighed eight hundred pounds, up-end it, claw-hammer it, and toss the heavy bolts of cloth out onto the long table. "Jeepers!" said Flaxley. "He did that while some o' the other young fellows here would be peeking around for help!" He studied Peter for two days more, and from then on wearied the head shippers of other emporiums, whenever he met one, with his tales of the strength and niftiness of the new man he'd "picked up."