"Sixth _Avenue_!" "Don't interrupt--where the dearest old codger in the world is just going out of the house-furnishing business in a small way. It's kept getting smaller and smaller--I've watched it shrink--till now it can't stand up against the big shops, and the old codger told me the other day that it was no use." "Poor fellow!" "No. He's not badly off, and he's going back up-state where he came from about forty years ago, and he can live--or die--very well on what he's put by. I've known him rather a good while, and we've been friends ever since we've been acquainted." "Go on," the elderly girl said. Erlcort was not stopping, but she spoke so as to close her mouth, which she was apt to let hang open in a way that she did not like; she had her intimates pledged to tell her when she was doing it, but she could not make a man promise, and she had to look after her mouth herself with Erlcort. It was not a bad mouth; her eyes were large, and it was merely large to match them. "When shall you begin--open shop?" she asked. "My old codger's lease expires in the fall," he answered, "but he would be glad to have me take it off his hands this spring. I could give the summer to changing and decorating, and begin my campaign in the fall--the first of October, say. Wouldn't you like to come some day and see the old place?" "I should love it. But you're not supposing I shall be of the least use, I hope? I'm not decorational, you know. Easel pictures, and small ones at that." "Of course. But you are a woman, and have ideas of the cozy. I mean that the place shall be made attractive." "Do you think the situation will be--on Sixth Avenue?" "It will be quaint. It's in a retarded region of low buildings, with a carpenter's shop two doors off. The L roars overhead and the surface cars squeal before, but that is New York, you know, and it's very central. Besides, at the back of the shop, with the front door shut, it is very quiet." The next day the friends lunched together at an Italian restaurant very near the place, and rather hurried themselves away to the old codger's store. "He _is_ a dear," Margaret whispered to Erlcort in following him about to see the advantages of the place. "Oh, mine's setting-hen's time," he justified his hospitality in finally asking them to take seats on a nail-keg apiece. "You mustn't think you're interruptin'. Look 'round all ye want to, or set down and rest ye." "That would be a good motto for your bookstore," she screamed to Erlcort, when they got out into the roar of the avenue. "'Look 'round all ye want to, or set down and rest ye.' Wasn't he sweet? And I don't wonder you're taken with the place: it _has_ such capabilities. You might as well begin imagining how you will arrange it."