At every turn, Margaret Getchell was a clever woman. Once when Mr. Macy had imported a wonderful mechanical singing-bird--a thing quite as unusual in that early day as was the phonograph when it came upon the market--and its elaborate mechanism had slipped out of order, it was she, with the aid of a penknife, a screw-driver and a pair of pliers--I presume that she also used a hair-pin--who took it entirely apart and put it together again. And at another time she trained two cats to permit themselves to be arrayed in doll's clothing and to sleep for hours in twin-cribs, to the great amusement and delectation of the visitors to the store. Later she caused a photograph to be made of the exhibit, which was retailed in great quantities to the younger customers. Miss Getchell was nothing if not businesslike. It was her keen, commercial acumen that made her alert in the heart center of the early store--the cashier's office. She tolerated neither discrepancies nor irregularities there. There it was that the New England school-ma'm showed itself most keenly. Did a saleswoman overcharge a patron two dollars? And did the cashier accept and pass the check? Then the cashier must pay the two dollars out of her meagre pay-envelope on Saturday night. "Overs" were treated the same as "unders." It made no difference that the store was already ahead two dollars on the transaction. Discipline was the thing. Discipline would keep that sort of offense from being repeated many times, and Macy's from ever being given the unsavory reputation of making a practice of overcharging. "Don't ever erase a figure or change it, no matter what seems to be the logical reason in your own mind," she kept telling her cashiers. "The very act implies dishonesty." So does the New England conscience ever lean backward. Yet it is related of this same Margaret Getchell that when a little and comparatively friendless girl had been admitted to the cashier's cage--a decided innovation in those days--and had been found in an apparent peculation of three dollars and promptly discharged by Mr. Macy, Miss Getchell dropped everything else and went to work on behalf of the little cashier. Intuitively she felt that another of her sex in the cage had made the theft--a young woman who had come into the store from a prominent up-state family to learn merchandising. The up-state young woman was fond of dress. Her dress demands far exceeded her salary. Of that Miss Getchell was sure.