I thought it was some sort of commercial term he was using, and when I asked him what it meant he said: "Why, some people are just born with the kind of face that makes the woolen merchant or the bank president trust them. They are not more honest than some other fellows. Indeed, some of them are plain pickpockets, but they have a credit face, so you have got to trust them. You just can't help it."
"And if they don't pay?"
"But they do. They get credit from somebody else and pay the jobber or the banker. Then they get more credit from these people and pay the other fellows. People of this kind can do a big business without a cent of capital. In Russia a fellow who pays his bills is called an honest man, but America is miles ahead of Russia. Here you can be the best pay in the world and yet be a crook. You wouldn't say that every man who breathes God's air is honest, would you? Well, paying your bills in America is like breathing.
If you don't, you are dead."
Chaikin, too, often let fall, in his hesitating, monosyllabic way, some observation which I considered of value. Of the purely commercial side of the industry he knew next to nothing, but then he could tell me a thing or two concerning the psychology of popular taste, the forces operating behind the scenes of fashion, the methods employed by small firms in stealing styles from larger ones, and other tricks of the trade.
At last I resolved to act. It was the height of the season for winter orders, and I decided to take time by the forelock
One day when I called at the designer's, and Mrs. Chaikin asked me for news (alluding to the thousands I was supposed to be expecting), I said: "Well, I have rented a shop."
"Rented a shop?"
"That's what I did. It's no use missing the season. If a fellow wants to do something, there is nothing for it but to go to work and do it, else he is doomed to be a slave all his life."
When I added that the shop was on Division Street her face fell