“Overalls,” replied Tom. “Mr. Cummings said I’d better bring a pair.”
“Right-o! Wait till I wait on that guy and I’ll show you over the shop.”
The “guy” was hard to suit in the matter of a rip-saw and Tom had several minutes to wait. The hardware store was rather narrow, but made up for that by being interminably deep. Counters ran along each side, set here and there with showcases. A row of supporting pillars of iron stretched lengthwise of the store in the middle and about them were clustered such articles of trade as wheelbarrows, garden hose, fire extinguishers, and step-ladders, for Cummings and Wright didn’t confine themselves to the ordinary stock of hardware. At the rear of the store a door led to an alley, and there was a window on each side of the doorway. The office was a railed-off enclosure in one corner here, while Miss Gertrude Miller was enshrined in a box-like structure of imitation mahogany and glass, into which the belts of the cash carriers ran and where she made change while presiding over the firm’s books. Tom was duly presented to Miss Miller by Joe and rather shyly shook hands with her. She had a good deal of red-brown hair and a pair of soft grey eyes and was undeniably pretty, a fact which added to Tom’s embarrassment, since pretty young ladies were things he had had little to do with. He was glad when Joe, explaining everything as he went along, led the way down the flight of dark stairs on the other side and landed him in a cellar which occupied the entire space under the store. Here there was a packing room at the rear, coal bins, and a heater whose future conduct, Tom gathered, would be under his supervision. The rest of the cellar held stock too heavy or bulky to keep above, except that at the far end, partly under the sidewalk, a good-sized room was partitioned off. Here Cummings and Wright conducted a plumbing, steam-fitting, and tinsmithing business. There was a separate entrance from outside, by means of a flight of iron steps, and the department was presided over by a small, wiry man named Jim Hobb. He had very black hair and the palest blue eyes Tom had ever seen. When Joe introduced them, Jim stopped to wipe his hands carefully on a bunch of very dirty waste before offering it to Tom. There was another man down there and a grinning youth of about Tom’s age, whose face was streaked and plastered with dirt and grease. His name was Petey. Tom never heard the rest of it. And the other man’s name was Connors.
A bell in the stock room rang shrilly and Joe Gillig hurried back upstairs, explaining to Tom that the signal meant that a customer had come in. In this case, however, Joe was mistaken, for it was Mr. Wright who had summoned him.
“Why aren’t you up here attending to things?” he demanded of Joe. “Anyone might come in and walk off with half the stock for all you’d ever know!” Then, seeing Tom, he stared doubtfully a moment and finally grunted as recognition came. “So you’ve turned up, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“Tom Pollock, sir.”
“Colic?”
“No, sir, Pollock.”