Before she had finished this aphorism, her Celtic wit perceived that her Celtic fluency had led her into what was rather a difficult position when she considered that she was talking with that important personage, the young and very pretty wife of the proprietor; and her Celtic tongue added smoothly, without so much as a comma, “though of course there are certain lucky people that have all of everything.” She smiled meaningly as she spoke, and told herself with an inward grin that she had got out of that pretty well, if she did say so. …
“Selling goods does polish people up to be the smooth article,” thought the wife of the proprietor, “but Miss Flynn thinks she’s just a little too smart. Flattery that’s too open is not the best salesmanship. It wears thin if you use it too often. I wouldn’t be surprised if Miss Flynn had lost more sales than she thinks with that oily manner. It’s more than probable that some of the silent country women who come in here go away without buying because they think that Miss Flynn is trying to make fools of them. No, she’s not really Grade A. But she’s so old she’ll have to get out before so very long anyhow.”
After this silent, inward colloquy, the voices of the two women became audible once more.
“Don’t you believe, Miss Flynn, that Mrs. Knapp could be tried out in saleswork soon?”
“I’d try her tomorrow if it was me,” said Miss Flynn promptly. “I bet a nickel she could knock the spots off that Margaret Donahue this minute.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Willing remembered, “Jerome had told her that Miss Flynn had that objectionable habit of ‘playing favorites’ among her girls—the Irish were so personal anyhow! No abstract ideas of efficiency and justice.”
Aloud she said, “I’m going to suggest to Mr. Willing that you let her have a try at noon hours, for the next week, when some of the girls are out to lunch.” She added tactfully to avoid seeming to commit the unpardonable offense of coming in from another department to dictate to a head salesperson about her girls, “We’re both of us so sorry for Mrs. Knapp in her great trouble we would like to help her along.”
“Yes, indeed, poor thing! Poor thing!” said Miss Flynn at once, in a sympathetic tone. But all the same, something of the substance of the younger woman’s silent observation had reached her dimly. What was Mrs. Willing up to? She didn’t like people nosing around her department that hadn’t any business there. What was Mrs. Willing, anyhow, when you got right down to it? Just the advertising woman, wasn’t she? And what was all this interest in Mrs. Knapp about? Were they thinking perhaps of getting rid of another faithful gray-haired employee, as they had already in other departments. Her Irish blood warmed. There’d be something said before. …
A few days later, “We were mistaken about that Mrs. Knapp, Mr. Willing,” said Miss Flynn somewhat belligerently. “Mrs. Willing said you wanted to have me try her out in saleswork, so I gave her a salesbook yesterday, and explained how to record sales and all, and turned her loose at the noon hour. But she hasn’t got the stuff in her. I’m sure of it.”
“What makes you think so, Miss Flynn?” asked the proprietor of the store mildly. As always when it was a question of the welfare of the store, he called in peremptorily every one of his five senses and all his attention, experience and acumen. On the aspect, attitude, voice and intonation of Miss Flynn he focused all of those trained faculties in a burning beam of which she was happily unaware. What she saw was his negligent attitude as he tipped back in his swivel chair, sometimes looking up at her, sometimes down at the blotting paper on his desk, on which he drew, as if absentmindedly, an intricate network of lines, like a problem in geometry. She thought that perhaps after all the Willings were not so dangerously interested in Mrs. Knapp’s advancement as she had feared, and she relaxed a little from what had been her intention on entering the room. It certainly was a fact that Mrs. Knapp did need a job something terrible, with those three children and a bedridden husband and all. “Well, I don’t mean that she’s not all right, well enough, and a good worker and all, but no salesgirl. Why, let me tell you how she let a customer get away today. Let her get away! Pushed her right out of the store, I might say; wouldn’t let her buy what she wanted. I was watching from across the aisle, without letting on, to see how she’d do. She was helping out in sweaters because they were short of help this noon. I saw her showing the goods to a customer. I heard the customer say, ‘My, isn’t that lovely!’ and I heard Mrs. Knapp say—you’d hardly believe it, I heard her say just as bossy, ‘No, I don’t believe that is really what you want, Mrs. Something-or-other, it wouldn’t be suitable for the purpose you. …’ And the customer looking at the goods as though she wanted to eat it … it was a dandy sports sweater too, one of the chickest we have. Somebody called me off just then,
