"Not this time," she said, "I think your office is too high up."

I told Mr. Sirle the object of the trip, and asked him if he could recommend the house to which Hersom had given me a letter of introduction, and he said yes, it was a good house to do business with.

"Are you going down there right away?" he asked.

I told him yes, whereupon he picked up the 'phone, gave a number, and asked, "Is this Plunkett?"

Plunkett, it seemed was the manager of Fiske & Co., the toy firm to which I was going. Mr. Sirle seemed to know everybody. It must be fine to be known and liked by everybody as he was.

"Say, Plunkett," he said over the 'phone, "This is Sirle. There's a bully good friend of mine, Mr. Black, going over to see your line of Christmas toys. He doesn't know the first thing about toys, but he's all right. I want you to do the best you can for him. . . . All right, I'll see if Mr. Black can be there about half-past two. . . ."

I nodded a.s.sent, and the appointment was made.

Well, Mr. Sirle wouldn't hear of us doing anything until we had lunch with him, so he took Betty and me out to one of the nicest little lunches I ever had. Betty quite fell in love with him, especially when she heard the way he spoke about his little boy. She said to me, coming home on the train: "A man must be all right who loves children as he does his boy."

Well, we went to the toy house, and we bought a selection. We spent $160, as a matter of fact, but I was certain that we got an excellent a.s.sortment. We bought a lot of mechanical toys and a number of games.

Mr. Sirle advised us to add air rifles, structural outfits, water pistols, and a few things of that nature which the regular jobbing houses carry, to make a big showing. He also advised me to make a good display in the window and have one counter exclusively for toys.

"Fix a train in the window, and let one of your boys keep it wound up,"

he added. "The little engine running around and round on the rails will attract a lot of interest. Nothing helps a window display so much as something moving in it."

In the evening we went to the theater and left New York early the next morning, getting back to Farmdale in time for me to put in a couple of hours at the store. I sent off a little order to Bates & Hotchkin for the extra toys which Mr. Sirle had advised me to buy.

Mr. Sirle sold me a book on show-card writing which he said would give me some good ideas also on advertising generally.

I felt a bit worried on seeing four great cases delivered to Stigler's 5- and 10-cent store, especially when I found that they were Christmas novelties and cheap toys. All the stuff I had bought was of the better quality. I hoped we wouldn't get stung with the venture, for it looked as if the toy business was going to be overdone in the town. The department store was already advertising that they'd have a children's fairyland for the whole of December. Traglio was running a lot of games, jigsaw puzzles and things of that kind. Funny thing, the year before the department store had been about the only one that did anything in toys, and they hadn't done very much. Now this year there were seven of us pushing toys and it looked as if some one was going to get left.

One day, Miriam Rooney, one of Mrs. Sturtevant's maids, came into the store and said she wanted to get some kitchen goods for her mistress. I asked her for a written order for the goods, in accordance with instructions from Mrs. Sturtevant, and she drew out a little book, printed especially for the purpose, in which the blanks were numbered.

She slipped in a sheet of carbon for the copy, and was about to fill out the order, when she said, with a peculiar look on her face:

"I--I suppose you'll charge it up the same way as Mr. Stigler used to?"

The moment she said it, I felt there was something wrong. I suppose I was prejudiced against that man, and every time I heard his name I saw red. Stigler had been trying in every way he could to hurt me. He was all the time cutting prices, and I had lost quite a lot of business because of my refusal to reduce my prices when customers came and told me they could buy cheaper at Stigler's. I used to do so at first, until Old Barlow advised me not to.

"Don't you think it is quite possible," he had said, "that your friend Stigler is sending some one into your store to see how much they can beat you down?"

I asked what good that would do him.

"Suppose a woman came in for a fifty-cent article and, by telling you she could get it from Stigler for forty cents, you were induced to let down the price, and not only sell it to her for that price, but make that the regular price on the article?"

Well, I had never done that, although I had occasionally let down the price on some individual article, but since then I had adopted the strictly one-price policy.

When Miriam Rooney asked me if I would charge it up the same way as Stigler, I was on my guard at once. "I don't know what Stigler does at all," I said, with a smile.

"Well," said Miriam hesitatingly, "you see, Mr. Black, we use a lot of things up to the big house"--Mrs. Sturtevant was the wife of a very wealthy manufacturer in the neighborhood and kept up a large establishment--"and you might want to make it worth our while for us to buy from you. Mrs. Sturtevant said she'd as soon we'd buy from you as anywhere else."

"In other words, you want a rake-off--is that it?"

"Well," she said, evidently not liking the brutally frank way I put it, "it ought to be worth something to you to get all the business of the big house, hadn't it?"

"No," I said, desiring to get rid of the subject in the easiest way, "I can't afford to do so at the price I sell my goods, and there would be no benefit to me in doing business without a profit, would there?"

"Oh, you're soft," she said. "It needn't cost you anything."

I knew well enough what she meant. "But that would be making Mrs.

Sturtevant pay more for the goods than they are worth."

"What d' you care, so long as she pays it?"

"I want Mrs. Sturtevant's business, young woman, but I'm hanged if I'm going to do any grafting to get it!"

"Keep your old things, then! If you're a fool, Stigler isn't!" And with that she bounced out of the store.

La.r.s.en wanted to telephone Mrs. Sturtevant and tell her all about it, but I said we'd never had much business from her and I'd hate, just before Christmas, to cause a girl to lose her job. "Besides," I said, "she'd deny it, of course."

I told Betty about it when I got home. All she did was to come over and give me a kiss and say, "I'm glad, boy dear, you are strong enough to do business honestly."

A few days later, Mrs. Sturtevant came into the store and bought quite a number of things. When she was through, she said to me:

"Didn't one of my maids come in here yesterday?"

"Yes, Mrs. Sturtevant."

"Why didn't she buy?"

"I couldn't satisfy her," I said with a smile.

"How do you mean, you couldn't satisfy her?" persisted Mrs. Sturtevant.

"Why, we--we couldn't agree on prices!"

"You are a very foolish young man!" I looked at her blankly--I didn't know what she meant. "If you hadn't a mother to look after you, I don't know what you would do!"

"What do you--I don't quite follow you," I smiled.

"I'll tell you, Mr. Black. Your mother and I, of course, know each other, and she paid me a call a few days ago; and, while talking, she mentioned that you refused to sell me some goods because you would have to add a premium to the price."--Betty must have told mother!--"I have suspected that I have been paying too much for my goods, and, when your mother told me that, I was certain of it. Besides, I suspected something when Miriam said she couldn't find the things we wanted here, and she had to go to Stigler's, when I asked her why she didn't buy them of you."

"Don't worry. I haven't dismissed the girl; but I have given her a good talking to."

If you knew Mrs. Sturtevant, you would know that she could give anybody a good talking-to. "But I do know I have paid prices that were too high," she continued, "because I asked a friend to go into Mr. Stigler's store and buy some things, and I checked those with the prices which had been charged me."

"And they were--?"

"Yes, about fifteen per cent. more."

"Hum!"

"Yes, exactly. I said something more vigorous than that, though, for your compet.i.tor first of all added ten per cent. for the maid and then apparently another five per cent. for himself! I have been over there and told him that I have instructed my help never to buy anything from him again, and that, if they do, I shall positively refuse to pay for it."