Mrs. Willing was as much interested as her husband in the arrival
of Mrs. Knapp in the store. When he had finished telling her about
the interview and they had laughed and wondered over the acuteness
of the novice’s criticism of McCarthy’s window-dressing, Nell said
reflectively: “Do you know, from all I’ve heard about her from the St.
Peter’s women--I wouldn’t be a bit surprised....”
Jerome recognized the idea to which his wife’s imagination, like his
own, had leaped, but he did not think it at all necessary to let Nell
know that the same possibility had occurred to him.
He shook his head disapprovingly. “No, nothing doing,” he said.
“Anybody that’s got so much pep to begin with, they’re always hard to
handle. Want to boss everything.”
He was pleased to have his wife point out what had already occurred to
him, the strangle-hold which their relative economic situations gave
them over Mrs. Knapp. “I don’t believe she’d ever be hard to handle or
want more than you wanted to give her--with all those reasons at home
for holding onto a job,” said Nell. She had as good a business head as
Jerome, however, felt as well as he how visionary it was to build even
the slightest hopes on so slight a foundation, and now contributed her
own share of cold water to the prudent lowering of their expectations.
“But a woman with no experience of business! Women who have spent
fifteen or twenty years housekeeping are no good for anything else.”
“I forgot to tell you,” said Jerome, “that she had worked some before
she was married. Her father keeps the store in Brandville. I looked him
up. Very good rating. She may get some of her ability from him. Those
country-store men sometimes acquire a real business hunch. But see
here, how can her family manage if she’s away all day? I didn’t feel
like asking her. But I wondered if she could be depended on. There’s
nothing more of a bother in a store than somebody who is always having
to miss a day.”
“Mrs. Prouty was telling me how she’s got everything organized there.
They are all saying it’s just like her. Mr. Knapp is fairly comfortable
now and can read, and sit up in bed, and doesn’t need constant care.
There’s nothing anybody can _do_ for him, now, poor thing! The two
older children are big enough to take care of themselves and dress
their little brother and help around the house. It seems that several
of the people at the store are being very helpful--not salespeople or
anybody in Mr. Knapp’s office but a couple of the delivery boys and one
of the cleaning women. The cleaning woman, old Mrs. Hennessy, works at
the store you see, before and after hours, so she can go to the Knapp
house in the daytime an hour or so to do up the work. And the delivery
boys take turns dropping in nights and mornings to look out for the
furnace and empty ashes and do the heavy things. They stop in daytimes
too as they go by to see if he wants anything. Oh, they manage,
somehow.”
“How good poor people are to anybody in trouble,” remarked Jerome
comfortably, pulling on his pipe and wondering for the first time if
perhaps there really might be some truth in that threadbare remark
which he had heard and repeated so many times and never believed a word
of.
“They say Mr. Knapp was always very kind to them at the store,” said
his wife, “the work people, I mean--was lovely to old Mrs. Hennessy
when her grandson had to be sent to the sanatorium. And he helped one
of the delivery boys out of a scrape.”
The proprietor of the store frowned and took his pipe hastily out of
his mouth. “He _did_! Which boy I wonder? What do you suppose he’d
been doing? I’d like to know more about that!” He was very much vexed
at the idea that something about which he had no information had been
happening at the store. It was just like that impractical, weak-kneed
Knapp to shield an erring employee and interfere with discipline! He
felt again a wave of the inexplicable annoyance which every contact
with Knapp had caused him from the first time he ever laid eyes on the
man. Helping the delivery boys to cover up their tracks, was he? Lord!
what a dead loss that man was every way you looked at him. He didn’t
blame Harvey Bronson for being rubbed the wrong way by him and snapping
his head off. Who wouldn’t?
He remembered suddenly that the man was now a bed-ridden cripple,
cooled down, put his pipe back in his mouth and said aloud: “Well, I
wish you’d drop in to the Cloak-and-Suits after a week or so and just
get an impression of her yourself.”
* * * * *
Miss Flynn, the veteran head saleswoman in the Cloak-and-Suits told
Mrs. Willing that the new employee was a wonder, and that the way
she had taken hold made them all sit up. “She’s just eating it up,
Mrs. Willing, just eating it up. She’s learned her stock quicker
than anybody you ever saw, as if she loved it. Now I never expect a
stock-girl to know where things are inside the first week; they do
_well_ if they do. But Mrs. Knapp--every minute there wasn’t a customer
on hand, would she fluff up her hair and get out her vanity box or
put her head together with the other girls, turning their backs on
the stairs--not much! Mr. Willing had told her the way he’s told every
stock-girl we’ve tried, that the first thing to do was to learn her
stock and she went to it as if ’twas to a wedding! With never a word
from me, she just tore off into the stock-cabinet every chance she got.
First off, she made a list of the things, the way they hung and then
as she worked I could see her look at her piece of paper, her lips
moving, just like a kid learning a spelling lesson. And yet for all she
was so deep in that, she’d keep her eye out for customers--yes, she
did! You wouldn’t believe a _stock-girl_ would feel responsible about
customers, would you, Mrs. Willing, when there’s nothing in it for her?
But for a fact she’d keep poking her head out of the stock-cabinet to
make sure nobody had come in; and once I saw her, when she didn’t know
I was looking, spot a customer coming up the stairs, and go to stir up
that lazy Margaret Donahue to get busy, and she reading a novel under
the counter the sly way she does behind my back!” Miss Flynn perceived
that she had wandered from the sequence of her narrative and added now,
“Well, by studying her work like that, it wasn’t three days--really,
I mean it, Mrs. Willing, not _three days_ before she knew where every
cloak and suit in this entire department was hung, or if it had been
sold. I heard Ellen O’Hern that can’t remember a _thing_ ask her to
bring out that blue knit cape with the astrachan collar, and Mrs. Knapp
say to her, in a nice quiet tone, so the customer couldn’t hear, ‘That
was sold day before yesterday, don’t you remember, to Mrs. Emery,’ and
go and get a blue broadcloth cape with a white wool collar that was the
closest thing to the other cape. And Ellen O’Hern made the sale too. It
was a good choice. I asked Mrs. Knapp how she ever happened to think
of picking out just that and she said the customer just looked to her
as though that blue broadcloth would be her style. I believe she slept
nights on that list of stock she made and said it over as she did her
hair in the morning. Lovely hair she’s got, hasn’t she, if she _is_ so
very plain in the face. And yet look at the style of her! Sometimes I
think that the plain ones have more style than the pretty ones, always.”
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 to-morrow 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 absent-mindedly, 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 bed-ridden 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 to-day.
_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, and I didn’t see what happened
afterwards, but after Mrs. Knapp had gone back to the stock-closet at
two, I went to look and the sweater was still there, _and no sale of a
sweater on Mrs. Knapp’s salesbook either_!”
Her horror at such an utter absence of any natural feeling for the
standards of her profession was sincere and deep. She felt that
the recital of the bare fact needed no embellishment to make its
significance apparent to any man in retail selling.
As she expected, Mr. Willing lowered the corners of his mouth and
raised his eyebrows high as he listened. He looked down at the
geometrical design he was drawing on the blotting paper. He thought
silently for a moment, gnawing meditatively on one corner of his lower
lip. Then, “I believe I’d better have a talk with Mrs. Knapp myself,”
he said weightily; “send her in at closing time, won’t you?”
Miss Flynn went off, walking softly, and well satisfied.
* * * * *
He had made a point of not speaking to Mrs. Knapp except for a casual
salutation since he had taken her up to the Cloak-and-Suits three weeks
before, and now as she came into the office he looked at her hard to
see what the experience had done for her, and make out if he could
gather from her aspect, attitude, voice and intonation anything like
the rich illustrative commentary which Miss Flynn had involuntarily
given him.
“How do you like the work, Mrs. Knapp,” he asked her, in a dry,
business-like way, “now that you have had a little experience of it?”
He was touched, he was actually moved by the flush of feeling which
came into her dark, ardent face as she answered, “Oh, Mr. Willing, I
_love_ it! I do hope I’ll give satisfaction, for I love every bit of
it.”
Jerome Willing loved it so himself that he felt warm towards the
kindred spirit. “I’m glad of that,” he said heartily, swept away for an
instant from his usual prudent reserve, “and I think there’s no doubt
whatever that you’ll give satisfaction.”
He added with an instant return to his dry manner, “I mean, of course,
when you’ve learned the work. There is a great deal to learn.”
“Yes, I know,” she said humbly. “I feel how ignorant I am. But I try
to pick up whatever I can. I’ve been watching with all my might how
the salespeople work. The job of stock-girl gives you such a splendid
chance to watch customers and salespeople. And yesterday Miss Flynn
gave me a salesbook and let me come out on the floor at noon. It is
very exciting to me,” she said, smiling a little, deprecating her
inexperience and ignorance.
“How did you get along?” asked Jerome, with an increase of the
nonchalant in his tone.
“I was so interested I could hardly breathe,” she told him. “You’re so
used to it all, Mr. Willing, you can’t think how fascinating it is to
me. I’ve always loved shopping, anyhow, though I’ve had very little
chance to do much. And I’ve thought about it a great deal, of course,
from the customer’s point of view. Now to be on the other side and to
be able to try to do what I’ve always thought salespeople ought to
do ... it’s wonderful! Of course, nothing very extraordinary. Just
what any experienced salesperson knows, without thinking about it, I
suppose.”
“Yes, I dare say. What kind of thing?” asked the proprietor of
the store, finding it hard to keep up his decent appearance of
indifference when he really felt like a hound who, after weary beating
about the bush, strikes a trail as fresh as paint and longs to give
tongue to his joy in a full-throated bay.
“Oh, all kinds of things, too little to mention. Just what I’ve
noticed in all the years I’ve shopped ... why, here’s one. The way a
salesperson gets up and comes toward you when you come in. I’ve always
loved to have a girl get up quickly, as if she were glad to see me, and
come towards me, looking right at me with a pleasant welcoming look.
It’s always made me feel cross when they drag themselves up and come
sagging over to me, looking down at their blouse-fronts or over my head
... or especially at their finger-nails. Isn’t it queer how it rubs you
the wrong way to have a salesperson look at her finger-nails?”
“Yes, that’s a good point,” said Mr. Willing guardedly, baying inwardly
for joy.
“And then another thing I just love to be able to do is to know just
where to lay my hand on anything. I’m afraid I’m very quick-tempered
and irritable by nature, and I know I’ve started up and gone right
out of a store, many’s the time, because the girl who was waiting
on me would look and look for something I wanted, fumbling around
absent-mindedly as if she weren’t really thinking about it, and
then call across to another girl, ‘Say, Jen, where’d you put that
inch-and-a-half binding?’”
The proprietor of the store repressed with difficulty a whoop of
delight over the exactitude of this snapshot. He looked down neutrally
at his desk.
The new saleswoman went on, “I’d always supposed that it must be ever
so hard to know where things are back of a counter from the way the
girls often act about it. But it’s not! Not for me anyhow! No harder
than knowing where your baking-powder and salt stand on the kitchen
shelf!”
“Oh, no, it’s not hard at all for any salesperson who puts her mind on
it.” Mr. Willing tossed this off airily and negligently. So successful
was his manner that his employee thought she was being indiscreet and
had forgotten to keep her place. “I’m taking too much of your time,”
she said apologetically, turning to go.
He kept her with an indulgent gesture, “Oh, no, you’ll find I’m always
interested in anything that concerns the Store,” he said grandly. “And
you haven’t told me yet about the sales you made in your first try.”
She looked at him earnestly now and spoke seriously, “Mr. Willing,
there is something that troubled me, and I’d like to tell you about
it. I’d made two or three sales all right, and then a customer, Mrs.
Warner it was, perhaps you know her, came in to look at sweaters. We’re
just out of the plain, one-color, conservative kind, though Miss Flynn
said you had some ordered and they’d be here any day. That was the
kind Mrs. Warner asked for. But she saw another one in the showcase,
a bright emerald-green one with pearl-gray stripes, the conspicuous
kind that young girls wear with pleated gray crepe-de-chine skirts and
pearl-gray stockings and sandals, and it sort of took her eye. I knew
it would look simply terrible on her--she’s between forty and fifty and
quite stout--the kind who always runs her shoes over. And I persuaded
her to wait till the plain ones came in. I thought she’d be better
satisfied in the end and feel more like coming back to the store. But
Miss Flynn thought it was very wrong in me to have let her get away
without making a sale.”
“Why didn’t you try to sell her both sweaters?” asked the merchant
testingly.
“Oh, her husband is only a clerk in Camp’s Drug Store! They haven’t
much money. She’d never have felt she could afford two. If she’d taken
the bright sporty one she’d have had to wear it for a year. And I know
her husband and children wouldn’t have liked it.”
“Oh, you know her personally?” asked Jerome.
“No, not what you’d call personally--just from what I’ve seen of her
here in the store. She’s quite a person to come around ‘just looking’
you know. I guess she loves to look at pretty things as much as I do.
And several times when I hadn’t any customer on hand, I’ve had a little
talk with her to make friends, and I showed her some of our nicest
things, letting her see that I knew they were nothing she wanted to
buy. I _love_ to show off some of the pretty young things to women like
that, who have to work hard at home. It’s as good as going to a party
for them. And it gives them the habit of coming to the store too when
they _do_ want something. Then she happened to mention her name. I put
it down on my list to memorize. I remember how I always used to like it
when a salesgirl remembered my name.”
“Well, for God’s _sake_!” ejaculated the young merchant inaudibly,
moved to an almost solemn thankfulness. Aloud he said, clearing his
throat and playing with a paper-cutter, “Don’t you find it hard to
remember the names of the customers?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve got a good memory for names naturally. And it
interests me. I try to find out something about the customer, too,
to put together with the name. It seems to keep me from getting them
mixed. This Mrs. Warner, for instance, I looked up her address in
the ’phone book and found out that she lives near one of my friends
in St. Peter’s parish, and I asked my friend about her and she told
me that Mr. Warner works for Camp’s. It helps to know something
personal, I think. In odd moments, when I’m walking down to the store
in the morning, for instance, I have my list in my hand, and try to
hitch the people to the names,--this way--‘J. P. Warner, drug-store
husband, about fifteen hundred a year. Laura J. Pelman, teacher in
Washington Street School, about twelve hundred. Mother lives with her.’
Inexperienced in selling as I am, I feel as though I could tell so much
more what people want in merchandise if I know a little about them.”
“Yes, that’s so,” he admitted this point without comment.
He could hardly wait to get home and report this talk to Nell. She
wouldn’t believe it, that was all. Well, he wouldn’t have believed
it either if he hadn’t heard it with his own ears. And such perfect
unconsciousness on the woman’s part! Apparently she thought that this
was the way that _all_ salespeople took hold of their work--save the
mark!
“That’ll do for to-day, Mrs. Knapp,” he said with dignity. “I’m glad to
hear you like the work. You seem to be giving very good satisfaction.
We ... we ...” he hesitated, wondering just how to phrase it. “We have
been meaning to add one more salesperson to the Cloak-and-Suits, to
see if the department would carry one more. If you like, we will try
you out there, beginning with next week. The pay is no higher. But of
course you get a bonus on all sales after your weekly quota is reached.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Willing,” she said, with some dignity of her
own, the dignity of a mature woman who knows that she is useful.
He liked her for her reserve. She turned away.
He called after her, as though it were a casual notion, just come into
his head, “Are you anything of a reader? Would you be interested in
looking at a manual on retail selling? I have a pretty good one here
that gives most of the general principles. Though of course nothing
takes the place of experience.”
Her reserve vanished in a flash. Her strongly marked, mature face
glowed like a girl’s. She came swiftly back towards him, her hand
outstretched, “Oh, are there _books_ written about the business?” she
cried eagerly. “Things you can study and learn?”