Peter took his lunch in the basement where he worked, the same being put up by his married sister in a package made to look like a camera-box. He had bought this lunch-box in Pentle's--he remembered it was sold to him by a pretty girl with a pleasant manner. It was just the thing for lunch--she had said--all the girls in Pentle's carried 'em; and there was ten per cent off for employees. It was the first time in his life that Peter ever got anything off on anything he'd ever bought, and he said so; and the salesgirl looked at him again and then smiled. "You're not a city man?" she said. Peter said he wasn't; and then his change came and he went off. It was his third day in Pentle's. He sat on a stool by the door leading into a passageway, to eat his lunch. Just across the passageway was the door into the girls' rest-room, where there were lounges and chairs and a big heater on which they set their cans of coffee to warm up. "My new helper, girls--height five feet eleven, weight a hundred ninety, thirty-two teeth in his head and not married--look him over," said old Flaxley, making Peter blush. "And now warm his coffee for him--he's been too shy to ask," and Flaxley handed Peter's coffee across the passageway. They looked him over, some of them saucily. And hearing Flaxley call him Peter, in a week or so some of them were calling him Peter and offering him pickles and doughnuts from their lunch-boxes; and there were always three or four ready to take his coffee from him when he reached it across the passageway to be heated. One day a group of them, with their heads bunched in the doorway as usual, chaffed him across the passageway. Peter was looking at a lovely white neck and dark little head, back of the row of heads in the door, and wondering where he had seen that girl before. And biting into a thick corned-beef sandwich, he remembered where--it was the girl who had sold him the lunch-box. "Ten per cent off for employees," shouted Peter; "all the girls carry 'em!" and held up the lunch-box. The others caught the idea and laughed uproariously--except the one who had sold it. She only blushed scarlet and disappeared, and did not come back. "She must 'a' thought I was tryin' to get acquainted," said Peter later to old Flaxley, "and didn't like it." That same afternoon Mrs. Pentle looked into the shipping-room. It was one of those warm days in winter and, of course, the steam was on. Peter was wearing only a sleeveless white jersey above his belt. Peter was wide-shouldered and trim-waisted, with the easy lines of the man who is quick as well as powerful in action. Flaxley saw Mrs. Pentle in the doorway. Henston was with her and, because Henston was with her, Flaxley stepped quickly over to the door. If Mr. Henston had anything to say about Peter he wanted to be there to hear it. Mrs. Pentle was watching Peter at work.