“Uncle Charley,” pronounced Jerome, “never got beyond the A. T. Stewart 1872 notion of stocking up four times a year with ‘standard goods.’” They both laughed at the old phrase. “Standard goods!” said Nell. “How funny it sounds! When you can’t sell a button the year after it’s made nowadays!” “I just _hope_,” said Jerome, “I just hope to the Lord that some of that gang of crooks who used to sell Uncle Charley try to work the same game on me just once! Where in the world did they _get_ the out-of-the-ark junk they used to work off on him? Must have had it stored in a barn somewhere!” His wife thought silently that now, after he had eaten and was beginning on his pie, with a second cigar in prospect, perhaps she might get to the question she had really wanted to ask all along. “Did you see that young Crawford at Jordan Marsh’s?” she asked. “Yes,” said Jerome. And Nell knew that for some reason it was all off. “Won’t he do?” she said in disappointment. “You _do_ need a store superintendent so awfully if you’re going to be away on buying trips.” “Well, it’s better to wait and get the right person than rush in and take somebody who’d gum the whole works. Oh, nothing wrong with Crawford. He’s a comer. But the more I talked with him the surer I was that he wouldn’t fit. Nobody like him would fit into the organization the way we want it. That corking slogan of yours says it all--‘The Homelike Store.’ Well, no smooth, big-city proposition like Crawford could be homelike, not in a thousand years. He wouldn’t want to be. He wouldn’t see the point. He’d be too smart for the town. He wouldn’t go to church. He’d play golf on Sundays. He wouldn’t belong to any of the societies or clubs. He’d drive a snappy runabout and beat it off to the city. The long and the short of it is that he’d be bored by the town and show it.” Nell saw all that. She nodded her head. She tried to imagine him at a church supper in the basement of the First Congo Church--and gave it up. “Worse than that, it came to me,” said Jerome, “that any man with pep enough for the job would have too much pep. He’d want to look forward to being taken into the business. And I don’t want any partner but you. This is _our_ store! But leave that alone. He wouldn’t know how to handle the girls. He’d be used to flip, knowing, East-side tenement-house kids. How would he get along with our small-town American high-school graduates who’re as good as anybody and know it? He might try to get gay with them--you haven’t forgotten Ritchie at Burnham’s? None of that for _our_ store. We’ve got little girls of our own--and besides in a little place like this scandal gets round so quick and people take it so personally.”