of those smart modern methods of hers to this particular small town they were serving. She was a first-rater, Nell was! It always had been fun to work with her even before they were married! And what a lark to work with her now! Good thing for Nell too! It had been asking a great deal of a real, sure-enough business-woman like Nell to give it all up for _Kinder_, _Küche_, and _Kirche_. Nell had been willing, had been happy, had loved having the babies, had made them all happy. But now the children were both going to school it stood to reason she’d find time hang heavy on her hands, whip-stitch that she was! And life in a small town was Hades if you didn’t have lots of work to do in spite of the big lawns and comfortable roomy homes. As far as that went, life anywhere was Hades if you didn’t have a job your size. You could see Nell had thought of all that (though she had been too good a sport to speak of it) by the way she had grabbed at this chance to get back into the old work, the work she’d loved so, and done so well at Burnham’s. Now if this Mrs. Knapp would only come through! He brought himself up short again.... What a kid he was to let his imagination reel it off like this--but a minute later he was thinking how he and Nell would enjoy giving an apt pupil steers, showing her how to use a microscope in fabric tests, how to know the right points of a well-made garment, how to handle her girls as she got along to executive work.... Oh, well, probably it was only a pipe dream--and he knew enough to keep it to himself. The clock in the National Bank opposite began striking. Jerome glanced at it and saw with astonishment that the hands pointed to twelve o’clock. Time to go home to lunch. As he got his hat and coat, he was wondering whether he had wasted a forenoon or whether perhaps on the contrary.... Chapter 9 Mrs. Willing was as much interested as her husband in the arrival of Mrs. Knapp in the store. When he had finished telling her about the interview and they had laughed and wondered over the acuteness of the novice’s criticism of McCarthy’s window-dressing, Nell said reflectively: “Do you know, from all I’ve heard about her from the St. Peter’s women--I wouldn’t be a bit surprised....” Jerome recognized the idea to which his wife’s imagination, like his own, had leaped, but he did not think it at all necessary to let Nell know that the same possibility had occurred to him. He shook his head disapprovingly. “No, nothing doing,” he said. “Anybody that’s got so much pep to begin with, they’re always hard to handle. Want to boss everything.”