TEDDY BEGINS HIS FALL CANNING
As the early October days waxed and waned, Teddy trailed his quarry
with the watchfulness of a sleuth. But Mr. Jarvis was not to be caught
napping. His self-lauded efficiency guarded him like a sentinel. He
buzzed, bubbled, nagged and tyrannized all in the name of the store.
Whatever and whoever he set out to reform, he pounced upon with an
awe-inspiring energy that none could combat. Even the Gobbler in her
most offended moments could not out-gobble him.
“I never saw the beat of that man!” she exclaimed almost tearfully to
Teddy. “I can’t do a thing to please him. Here you and me have spent
pretty near a whole morning stacking these pans the way he wants ’em
and now he says it’s not the way he told me. I’d go to Mr. Everett
about it, but after what happened that other time I don’t like to. He
has enough to bother him since this miserable fault-finder came down
here.”
“It’s too bad,” sympathized Teddy. “Mr. Hickson told me what he did to
Mr. Everett when you went to him. Never mind, Miss Newton, p’raps he
won’t be here always.”
“He’ll be here long after poor Mr. Everett’s gone,” was the woman’s
gloomy prediction. “He’s one of the under-handed kind that won’t play
fair. When you think you’ve got him he switches things so as to make
you look like the guilty one.”
“Sixty-five! Boy!” sounded the call.
“Gotta go. I hear his gentle voice. I’m awful sorry, Miss Newton. I’ll
come back as soon as I can and help you.” With a genial nod of promise,
Teddy trotted off in the direction of the call.
“Here, boy. Get these buckets out of the way.” Mr. Jarvis stood
surrounded by a vast array of large galvanized pails. From an almost
bare table, Sam Hickson was removing the last of them to a place on
the floor beside others of their kind. The salesman’s close-cropped
red hair seemed positively to be standing on end with rebellion. His
good-humored mouth drooped sullenly, and he looked as though he yearned
to say unutterable things.
“Get a step-ladder. Be lively now. These buckets must all be put in
place instantly. I can’t understand why it should take so long to do
such a simple task. _I_ could have done it easily in ten minutes.”
“You couldn’t if you stopped to wait on customers,” flashed Hickson,
coloring angrily.
“That’s no excuse. It should have been done before the customers began
to arrive,” blandly reminded the assistant. “Now you are wasting time
arguing. Get to work and fill this lower rack with buckets. By the
time you’ve finished the boy will be here with the ladder. The idea of
allowing all that space on those racks to lie idle!”
“Those racks are very unhandy for buckets,” retorted Hickson. “We tried
them and the saleswomen had so much trouble reaching up to them that
Mr. Everett said not to use them.”
“Never mind what Mr. Everett says. _I_ am doing this. Don’t talk back
to me, either. Get busy.” Mr. Jarvis took decided umbrage at the
mention of Mr. Everett.
Hickson said no more. Fighting savagely for self-control he laid hands
on a couple of the largest-sized pails and moved toward the despised
rack.
“Not those large buckets,” objected the taskmaster. “Use your brain.
The smallest sizes must go on the lower rack; the larger ones above.”
Hickson accepted the correction in morose silence and with a shrug of
his broad shoulders endeavored to carry out instructions.
“Ah!” Mr. Jarvis emitted a satisfied cluck. “Here is our ladder. It
took you long enough to get it, boy. I could have done it in half that
time.”
“Could you?” Teddy simulated a solemn, wide-eyed admiration that nearly
convulsed the abused Hickson.
“I could.” Mr. Jarvis took his questioner seriously. “Set it there. Now
Mr. Hickson----”
“Young man, will you please wait on me?” A plaintive voice was heard at
the assistant’s elbow.
“Certainly you shall receive attention.” Mr. Jarvis beamed patronizingly
on the woman. “What can we show you this morning?”
“I’d like to look at a small oven. You see I do light housekeeping
and----”
“What _you_ need, Madam, is a fireless cooker. You have no idea of the
time and labor you can save by installing one in your home. Now the
fireless cooker which we principally handle is a marvel of----”
“I wouldn’t have one in the house.” The plaintive tones took on a shade
of belligerence. “I came to see an oven and it’s an oven I want. If you
don’t care to show it to me I guess I can go somewhere else. If I don’t
know my own mind, then I don’t know who does.”
“Hickson, show this lady what she _says_ she wants.” Mr. Jarvis lost
interest suddenly in the customer. He waved her away as though in a
hurry to be rid of her. “Here, 65, you can put these buckets on the top
shelf. _I_ will hand them up to you. Set the ladder right there. Now,
hustle.”
Teddy ran up the five steps of the ladder with the agility of a monkey.
The assistant seized a bucket in each hand, and, rising on his capable
toes, delivered them to the waiting Teddy. For the next five minutes
the efficiency man was in his glory. From a safe distance several
salespeople watched the scene with scornful grins.
“I gotta move my ladder.” Teddy skipped down from his perch and shoved
the ladder along a few feet.
“A little farther the other way. Right there. Now step lively. Two
minutes more will see us finished.”
Teddy again ascended like a bird and waited. Four more buckets clanked
to rest on the heights. Only a lonely duo now adorned the floor. Mr.
Jarvis swooped down on them, then poised one of the pair in reach
of Teddy’s thin fingers. Teddy gazed soulfully down upon the round,
up-turned face of his helper. He leaned a trifle forward as though
to take the bucket. The ladder gave a sudden, threatening lurch. In
a wild effort to regain his balance, he waved the huge bucket over
the efficiency man’s head. Very curiously it turned upside down and
descended.
The remaining bucket in Mr. Jarvis’ hand left it and careered down the
aisle with a wild rumble. But the bucket that had recently parted from
Teddy’s hand was denied that pleasure. It had found a resting-place and
remained fixed.
Then the delighted spectators to the moving scene were treated to
a spectacle that furnished them with hilarious memories for many a
long day afterward. The hitherto inanimate bucket became miraculously
endowed with a short, pudgy body and a pair of furiously flapping arms
that had formerly belonged to Mr. Jarvis. Down the aisle it staggered,
crashing full tilt into a table of saucepans, a number of which bounced
to the floor in noisy resentment of the invasion.
Stranger still, the magic bucket came into possession of speech. A
tumult of unintelligible sounds, such as only an animate infant bucket
could be expected to make, flowed forth from under it. Then its brief
debut into the animate was over. Violently it severed connections with
the body it had appropriated and hit the floor with a rattle and roll.
“Oh, Mr. Jarvis, did it hurt you?” Two round, solicitous, black eyes
met those of the sputtering efficiency man. While Mr. Jarvis’ head
was imprisoned in its galvanized cast, Teddy had indulged in a silent
extravagance of glee that nearly spilled him off the ladder. He was now
as solemn as a judge. Angelic pity shone from his freckled face.
“You--you----” Mr. Jarvis was absolutely bereft of speech suitable to
the crime.
“I almost fell off the ladder myself,” comforted Teddy gently, “but
accidents have to happen sometimes. I guess I better pick up those
saucepans. If Mr. Seymour came along and saw them all over the floor he
mightn’t like it.”
“What are all these pans doing on the floor?” a stern voice broke in.
Mr. Everett had come upon the scene just in time to miss the accident.
“See that they are put straight at once, Teddy. Such a litter is a
disgrace to the department, Jarvis.”
Mr. Everett marched on down the aisle, secretly exultant that for once
he had caught his obnoxious assistant to rights. The efficiency man’s
face took on a poppy-red hue. For once he was dumb. The rapidity with
which things had happened fairly dazed him.
“Pick up those pans,” he muttered. With one awful glance at the author
of the disaster he took himself off to the far side of the department
to think things over.
Teddy gazed dreamily after him. Reaching into his coat pocket he drew
forth a tiny, leather-covered book. From another pocket he produced
a stubby pencil. Resting the book on a step of the ladder he wrote
briefly, “October 6. Canned the Percolator.” After it he made a long,
black mark. “Some time he’ll stay canned,” was his sage prophecy.