relatives?"

She unbent some more and almost smiled. The painted critter was her pa and he was considered a wonderful likeness.

Well, that was enough for your uncle Jim Henry. He settled down to his job then and the way he poured gush over that painted Pendlebury man was close to sacreligion. But Letitia never pumped up a blush; worship was what she expected for her and her pa. He’d been a member of the Governor’s staff and a bank president and a church warden and an alderman and land knows what. His daughter and Jacobs had a real sociable interview and it ended by her promisin’ to drop in at the store and look our stock over. ’Course ’twa’n’t likely ’twould suit her—she was very exacting, she said—but she’d look it over.

We looked it over fust. We put in the rest of that day changin’ everything around on the counters and shelves, puttin’ the canned stuff in piles where they’d do the most good, and settin’ advertisin’ signs and such in front of the empty places where they’d been afore. Even Pullet worked, though he couldn’t understand it, and growled because he had to leave the musty old book he was readin’ and the "genealogical tree" he’d begun to cultivate once more. Jacobs was pretty well disgusted with Pullet. Said he was an incumbrance on the concern and hadn’t any business instinct.

All the next day and the next we hung around, dressed up to kill—that is, Jim Henry’s togs would have killed anything with weak eyes—waitin’ for Letitia Pendlebury to come aboard and inspect. But she didn’t come that day, or the next either. Jacobs was disapp’inted, but he wouldn’t give in that he was discouraged. The fourth forenoon, when there was still nothin’ doin’, he and I went on a cruise with a hired horse and buggy over to Bayport, where we had some business. We left Pullet in charge of the store and when we came back he was lookin’ pretty joyful.

"Who do you think has been here?" he says, in his thin, polite little voice. "Miss Letitia Pendlebury called this afternoon."

"She did!" shouts Jacobs.

"Did she buy anythin’?" I wanted to know.

No, it appeared that she hadn’t bought anythin’. Fact is, Pullet had forgot he was supposed to be a storekeeper. When Letitia came in he was roostin’ in his family tree, had the chart spread out on the counter and was fillin’ in some of the twigs with the names of dead and gone Beanblossoms. He couldn’t climb down to common things like crackers and salt 

 Prev. P 12/171 next