Asaph promised, and Meldrum promised to arrange an extension of credit. But Asaph would have feared bankruptcy less than such a step. As soon as Meldrum was gone he put the cap-sheaf to his little army of relicts and remnants by engaging Debby Larrabee! She made the rest look handsome by contrast. She was the joke that he tried to spring on his wife. Josie took the allusion seriously, and Asaph was soon trying to hold her down. "Wait! Wait till you hear who it is!" he pleaded; but she stormed on: "I don’t care who it is. I’m not going to have you exposed to the wiles of any of those designing minxes. I won’t have her, I tell you." At length he shouted above the din: "I was only joking. It’s Debby Larrabee! I’ve engaged Debby Larrabee! They’ve lost all their money." When Josie understood, she saw the joke. She began to laugh with hysterics, to slap and push her husband about hilariously. "Aw, you old fraud, you! So you’ve engaged Dubby Debby! Well, you can keep her. I don’t care how late you stay at the store as long as Debby’s there." Deborah was fortunate enough not to overhear this. In fact, the long drought in Debby’s good luck seemed to be ending. The skies over her grew dark with the abundance of merciful rain. A gentle drizzle preceded the cloudburst. There usually is a deluge after a drought. A few days later found Debby installed in the washable silks. The change in her environment was complete. Instead of dozing through a nightmare of ineptitude in the doleful society of her old mother in a dismal home where almost nobody ever called, and never a man, now she stood all day on the edge of a stream of people; she chattered breezily all day to women in search of beautiful fabrics. She handled beautiful fabrics. Her conversation was a procession of adjectives of praise. Trying to live up to her surroundings, she took thought of her appearance. Dealing in fashions, with fashion-plates as her scriptures, she tried to get in touch with the contemporary styles. She bounded across eight or ten periods at one leap. First she found that she could at least put up her hair as other women did. The revolution in her appearance was amazing. Next she retrimmed her old hat, reshaped her old skirt–drew it so tightly about her ankles that she was forced to the tremendous deed of slitting it up a few inches so that she could at least walk slowly. The first time her mother noticed it she said: "Why, Debby, what on earth! That skirt of yours is all tore up the side." Debby explained it to her with the delicious confusion of a Magdalen confessing her entry upon a career of profligacy. Her mother almost fainted. Debby had gone wrong at this late day! She had heard that department-stores were awful places for a girl. The papers had been full of minimum wages and things.