By George! She was ready to step right into it this minute. She slipped off her well-cut cloak and showed a severe black serge dress. “Why, yes, if you like,” he said negligently. She took off her hat showing magnificent dark hair, streaked with gray. He said casually, as if making talk, “I happened to see you watching our window-dresser at work as you came in. What was your impression of what he was doing?” She said seriously, reflectively, “Well, Mr. McCarthy always seems to me to put too many things in his windows. I’ve thought a good many times that if he chose his things with more care and had fewer it might catch the eye better.” “Well, Great Scott!” said Mr. Willing to himself in extreme surprise. Aloud he said impassively, “We haven’t talked wages yet. Stock-girls only get ten dollars a week to begin with, you know.” “That is a great deal better than nothing,” she said firmly. “We have a few savings that will keep us going till I can get a start. And perhaps I may learn the business fairly quickly.” “You bet your life you will,” said the proprietor of the store inaudibly. Aloud he said, “The cloakroom for salespeople is at the other end of the second floor. If you’ll put your things there and come back here, I’ll take you to your department and introduce you to Miss Flynn.” * * * * * When Jerome Willing came back to his office he stood for a while motionless, frowning down at his desk. “Yes, of course it was preposterous,” he told himself. He’d known her less than half an hour--all the same he’d backed those crazy hunches of his before--it had paid him to play his hunches! And if something like that _did_ pan out ... he fell once more into a reverie. She was just the kind of woman he was looking for, mature, with a local following, somebody the women of the town trusted. He could hear their voices plain, “Ask Mrs. Knapp to step here a minute, won’t you please? She has such good taste, I’d trust her judgment....” And she’d be tied up so tight with a sick husband and family of children there’d be no chance of some one snatching her away and marrying her just after he’d taught her the job. It would be _fun_ to teach somebody who wanted to learn. Creative work--it always came back to that if you were going to do anything first-rate. You took raw material and shaped it with your own intelligence. If only she might be the raw material! If she turned out to have only a little capacity to study and get information out of books as well as the character and personality he was pretty sure she had. Wilder dreams had come true. His thoughts ran on again to the future of the store ... with a competent manager keeping the wheels and cogs running smoothly ... with him to do the buying ... small lots at a time ... every fortnight ... quick sales ... rapid turnovers that made low profits possible. With Nell handling the advertising campaign as only an intelligent college woman could, with just the right adaptation