"There they sat, in their black dresses and white collars. Some of the collars weren't so white. I suppose, after a few years, washing out white collars at night when you get home from work loses its appeal. First Kiesing made a speech about the meaning of Shield's, and the loftiness of its aim. I don't know where he got his information but I gathered that to have the privilege of clerking there makes you one of the anointed. Kiesing's general manager, you know. Then he brought forward Mrs. Hough. She's pretty old and her teeth sort of stick out and her voice is high and what they call querulous, I suppose. Anyway it never drops at the end of a sentence. She told how she had started the Ever Upward Club with a membership of only fifteen, and now look at it. Considering that you have to belong to it, and pay your dues automatically when you enter the store, I don't see why she feels so set up about it. But anyway, she does. You'd think she had gone around converting the heathen to Christianity. She told us in that nasal rasping voice that it was the spirit of cheer and good-will that made tasks light. Yes, indeed. And when we got home at night we were to help our mothers with the dishes in a spirit of cheer and with a right good will. Then she read one of those terrible vim-and-vigour poems. You know. Something like this: If you think you are beaten, you are. If you think you dare not, you don't. If you like to win and don't think you can It's almost a cinch you won't. There was a lot more to it, about Life's battles and the man who wins. Most of the girls looked half-dead in their chairs. They had been working over-time for the spring opening. Then a girl sprang to the platform--she's the club athletic director, a college girl, big, husky, good-looking brute, too. 'Three rousing cheers for Mrs. Hough! Hip hip--' We all piped up. And I couldn't think of anything but Oliver Twist and the beadle--what was his name?--Bumble. Then this girl told us about the value of games and the Spirit of Play, and how we should leap and run about--after you've done the dinner dishes with a right good will, I suppose, having previously walked eleven thousand miles in your department showing little imports and trying to convince a woman with a forty-two bust that a thirty-eight blouse is a little snug.... 'The romance of business.' Ha!" "But you like it, don't you Charley?" "Yes. Goodness knows why. Certainly I don't want to turn out a Healy, or a Hough--or even a female Kiesing. Jesse did a poem about it all." "A good one?" "Good--yes. And terrible. One of his sledge-hammer things. He calls it 'Merchandise.' The girls, of course."