cloak and suit in this entire department was hung, or if it had been sold. I heard Ellen O’Hern that can’t remember a _thing_ ask her to bring out that blue knit cape with the astrachan collar, and Mrs. Knapp say to her, in a nice quiet tone, so the customer couldn’t hear, ‘That was sold day before yesterday, don’t you remember, to Mrs. Emery,’ and go and get a blue broadcloth cape with a white wool collar that was the closest thing to the other cape. And Ellen O’Hern made the sale too. It was a good choice. I asked Mrs. Knapp how she ever happened to think of picking out just that and she said the customer just looked to her as though that blue broadcloth would be her style. I believe she slept nights on that list of stock she made and said it over as she did her hair in the morning. Lovely hair she’s got, hasn’t she, if she _is_ so very plain in the face. And yet look at the style of her! Sometimes I think that the plain ones have more style than the pretty ones, always.” Before she had finished this aphorism, her Celtic wit perceived that her Celtic fluency had led her into what was rather a difficult position when she considered that she was talking with that important personage, the young and very pretty wife of the proprietor; and her Celtic tongue added smoothly, without so much as a comma, “though of course there _are_ certain lucky people that have all of everything.” She smiled meaningly as she spoke, and told herself with an inward grin that she had got out of that pretty well, if she did say so.... “Selling goods does polish people up to be the smooth article,” thought the wife of the proprietor, “but Miss Flynn thinks she’s just a little too smart. Flattery that’s too open is not the _best_ salesmanship. It wears thin if you use it too often. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miss Flynn had lost more sales than she thinks with that oily manner. It’s more than probable that some of the silent country women who come in here go away without buying because they think that Miss Flynn is trying to make fools of them. No, she’s not really Grade A. But she’s so old she’ll have to get out before so very long anyhow.” After this silent, inward colloquy, the voices of the two women became audible once more. “Don’t you believe, Miss Flynn, that Mrs. Knapp could be tried out in saleswork soon?” “I’d try her to-morrow if it was me,” said Miss Flynn promptly. “I bet a nickel she could knock the spots off that Margaret Donahue this minute.” “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Willing remembered, “Jerome had told her that Miss Flynn had that objectionable habit of ‘playing favorites’ among her girls--the Irish were so _personal_ anyhow! No abstract ideas of efficiency and justice.”