The next morning the Bazar was open at the regular hour. Shoppers open at the regular hour. Shoppers came as numerously as before. People were as eager as ever to enhance their charms or disguise their flaws. In a few days Asaph Shillaber was again in his office. He wore black always, and a black tie, and he moved about with mourning in his manner. A month later his cravat was brown, not black, and the next week it was red. He was taking more care of his costume. He talked more with the women customers, especially the young women, and he did not keep his eye anxiously on the front door. He rubbed his hands once more, recommending his goods. In a few months younger girls were behind many of the counters. Deborah felt that youth was invading and replacing. She wondered how soon her turn would come. It would be a sad day, for she loved the work. But she took some reassurance from the praises of Asaph. He paused now and then to compliment her on a sale or her progress. He led up to her some of his most particular customers and introduced her with a flourish. Sometimes he paused as he went down the aisle, and turned back to stare at her. She knew that she had blushed, because her face was hot, and once Mrs. Crankshaw, who was trying to match a sample, whispered to her: "Say, Deborah, what kind of rouge do you use? It gives you the nicest color, and it looks like real." When Deborah denied that she painted, the undertaker’s wife was angry. She thought Deborah was trying to copyright her complexion. Deborah’s cheeks tactfully turned pale again, now that Asaph had taken his strange eyes from her, and now the woman said: "You’re right; it’s your own. It comes and goes! Look, now it’s coming back again." And so was Asaph. When Mrs. Crankshaw had moved off Asaph hung about awkwardly. Finally he put the backs of his knuckles on the counter and leaned across to murmur: "Say, Debby, I was telling Jim Crawford yesterday that you made more sales than any other clerk in the shop this last month." "Oh, really, did I?" Deborah gasped, her eyes snapping like electric sparks. They seemed to jolt Asaph; he fell back a little. Then he leaned closer. "Crawford said he’d like to have you in his store. I told him you were a fixture here. Don’t you leave me, Debby. You won’t, will you?" "Why, Asaph!" she cried. "Leastways, you’ll let me know any offer you get before you take it. You can promise me that, can’t you?" "Of course I will, but– Well, I never!" This last was true. She never had known till now that superlative rapture of a woman, to have one man trying to take her away from another. Debby had not known it even as a little girl, for if two boys claimed the same dance–which had happened rarely enough–they did not wrangle and fight, but each yielded to the other with a courtesy that was odious.