progress. He led up to her some of his most particular customers and introduced her with a flourish. Sometimes he paused as he went down the aisle, and turned back to stare at her. She knew that she had blushed, because her face was hot, and once Mrs. Crankshaw, who was trying to match a sample, whispered to her:

"Say, Deborah, what kind of rouge do you use? It gives you the nicest color, and it looks like real."

When Deborah denied that she painted, the undertaker's wife was angry. She thought Deborah was trying to copyright her complexion. Deborah's cheeks tactfully turned pale again, now that Asaph had taken his strange eyes from her, and now the woman said:

"You're right; it's your own. It comes and goes! Look, now it's coming back again."

And so was Asaph. When Mrs. Crankshaw had moved off Asaph hung about awkwardly. Finally he put the backs of his knuckles on the counter and leaned across to murmur:

"Say, Debby, I was telling Jim Crawford yesterday that you made more sales than any other clerk in the shop this last month."

"Oh, really, did I?" Deborah gasped, her eyes snapping like electric sparks. They seemed to jolt Asaph; he fell back a little. Then he leaned closer.

"Crawford said he'd like to have you in his store. I told him you were a fixture here. Don't you leave me, Debby. You won't, will you?"

"Why, Asaph!" she cried.

"Leastways, you'll let me know any offer you get before you take it. You can promise me that, can't you?"

"Of course I will, but–  Well, I never!"

This last was true. She never had known till now that superlative rapture of a woman, to have one man trying to take her away from another. Debby had not known it even as a little girl, for if two boys claimed the same dance–which had happened rarely enough–they did not wrangle and fight, but each yielded to the other with a courtesy that was odious.

On her way home Deborah began to doubt the possibility of it all. Asaph had been talking about somebody else, or he had been joking–he was such a terrible fellow to cook up things and fool people! Or else Jim Crawford was just making fun of Asaph. She would not tell her mother this news.

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