"No," returned Tobias magnanimously. "If you're so sure of your man, I guess it's all right, and the sale'll have
to stand. I'm sorry, Mr. Logan. But you see how it is. Can't one of our young ladies show you something else?"
"No, thank you, not to-day," said Logan, his long, sallow face red and the twinkle gone out of his eyes. "It was Little Sister or nothing for me."
But though he gathered up his mass of greenbacks and stalked away with his smart hat on the back of his incredibly sleek head, Tobias was not greatly worried. The young swell was sweet on Child, and wasn't above a flirtation with red-haired Leavitt at the same time he was trying to spoon the English girl. He would come back, and soon—no fear!—to see how his invention was going.
"Lordy! but that was a big bluff I put up!" sighed Earl Usher to Cupid, as he slid his watch into the little boy's hand. "If Tobias had taken me, I'd 'a' bin up a tree! Sure you can get off, sonny?"
"Dead sure, for they'll be sendin' me out. They always do. I'll manage the biz for you."
"Good Bud! You get a quarter for yourself, see?—for puttin' me on to the job in time."
Mr. Tobias happened to be at a distance when Usher's customer came in and paid. But when the floorwalker inquired, at six-thirty—characteristically remembering a small detail in the terrible Christmas rush—the transaction had been completed and Little Sister was gone. Even Win had not seen the purchaser. Ursus had come in a hurry, his client's twenty dollars in hand, and had taken away the box that contained the doll. There had not even been time to ask if the man who had bought it looked kind and rich; but Win was too thankful to have been
saved from her "scrape" with Logan to care passionately, after all, for Little Sister's fate.
That night, a few minutes before ten o'clock, the employees of the various sections were lined up (men in one aisle, girls in another) to receive their pay envelopes and, in most cases where the "holiday extras" were concerned, their dismissals. Just in front of Winifred Child was Sadie Kirk, and Win knew that for her friend it was a question almost as important as that of life and death whether she were to stay or go.