"You’d soon learn the stock, and the prices are all marked in plain letters that you can memorize easy. You’ve got a lot of friends, and we give a commission on all the sales over a certain amount. Better try it." Debby felt now, for the first time, all the sweet panic that most women undergo with their first proposal. This offer of the job of saleswoman was as near as Debby had come to being offered the job of helpmeet. She even murmured, "This is so sudden," and, "I’ll have to ask mama." It was an epoch-making decision, a terrible leap from the stagnant pool of the Larrabee cottage to the seething maelstrom of Shillaber’s Bazar. She went home to her mother with the thrilling, the glorious news that henceforth she could acquire all of five dollars a week by merely being present at Shillaber’s for twelve hours or so a day, except Sat’days, when the store was open evenings till the last possible customer had gone home to bed. Mrs. Larrabee apologized to Heaven for doubting its watchfulness, commended Asaph Shillaber to its attention, and bespoke for him a special invoice of blessings. And Asaph went home to his midday dinner as cheerfully as if he had received them. First he announced the good word about Meldrum’s leniency, which Josie greeted with: "You see! I told you that the party would be the proper caper. Maybe after this you’ll believe that your wife knows a thing or two." Asaph assured her that he would never doubt that she knew at least that much. Then, like the wag he was, he said that he had added a new clerk to his staff–a lady and a beauty, whose charms would draw no end of custom to the store and dazzle the drummers from far and near. Josie’s facile temper flashed at once into glow. One of her chief interests in the Bazar had been to make sure that it never harbored any saleswoman whose beauty could possibly lure her husband’s mind from his ledgers or his home ties. Under the pretext of purchases or suggestions she made frequent tours of inspection, and if a girl too young or a pair of eyes too bright gleamed behind a counter Asaph heard of it at once. Some years before he had bowed to the inevitable and made it a rule to engage no woman who could imaginably disturb Josie’s delicate equipoise. Meldrum had noticed the strange array and had been inclined to impute the decline of the store’s prosperity to the appearance of its staff. "Good Lord, Ase!" he had groaned. "What you got here–the overflow of the Home for Aged and Indignant Females? You’ve collected a bunch of clock-stoppers that makes a suffragette meeting look like a Winter Garden chorus. People like those can’t sell pretty things. Send ’em all to the bone-yard and get in some winners."