There was a lull in the business of the morning when Jason walked into the grocery of Peter Potter. Peter was precisely what his name implied—British, English of birth, as all Potters have a right to be, stable of character as all Peters have a right to be; the rock that a discerning mother had discovered in his small face before she had decorated him with the Peter appellation. Unquestionably, Peter had not been as progressive as he might have been. He had been faithful in the grocery business, but he had lacked talent. There were a thousand things that he should have been doing in the morning lull; instead he was smoking a pipe and contentedly stroking a cat. His florid face was very round, his bright eyes were twinkly blue. A hint of shrewdness and penuriousness lay in the lines around them; more than a hint of stubbornness lay in the breadth of his chin. Conservatism was written all over his baggy breeches and his gingham shirt, but no one would have dared to look at Peter Potter and say that he was not immaculately clean in person, honest in disposition, while the discerning might have surmised that he was misinformed as to the size of his palpitator. Peter prided himself upon being close. Jason felt sufficiently well acquainted with Peter to venture a familiarity. Now Jason was not given to familiarities, but he had spent a searing night in the woods, he had spent the morning in Billings’ pasture and at his deserted home. He had reached a decision, and that decision was that he was utterly alone in the world, that he had his own way to make, and that he must begin by using his wits. And so, in desperation, he thrust his past behind him, and spiritually as naked as at the hour of his birth and equally as forsaken, he stood before Peter Potter. In a voice that sounded peculiar to himself and that caught Peter in an unaccustomed way, Jason said quietly: “Peter, I have decided that the time has come when you need a partner in your business.” Peter Potter lifted the cat by each of its fore legs and setting one of its hind feet upon either of his knees, carefully surveyed its white belly and the exquisitely lined tortoise shell of its back, and replied: “Who says I haven’t had a partner for lo, these many years? Hasn’t Jezebel performed signal service when she’s kept this place free of rats and mice?” “She surely has,” answered Jason, “but your store isn’t going to regain its position as the leading grocery of Ashwater merely by being free of rats and mice—keeping a cat in their stead. Many people don’t like cats in groceries.”