MARY CRAWFORD'S CHART
"With this chart, madam," said the agent, "you are absolutely independent of dressmakers and seamstresses. After the instructions I have just given, a woman can cut and fit any sort of garment, from a party gown for herself to a pair of overalls for her husband, and the chart is so scientific in its construction, its system of measurement so accurate, that anything cut by it has a style and finish seldom seen in home-made garments. I have handled many things in the course of my ten years' experience as a traveling salesman, but this chart is the most satisfactory invention of all. I've been handling it now about eight months, and in that time I've sold—well, if I were to tell you how many hundred, you wouldn't believe me, so what's the use?—and I have yet to hear of anybody who is dissatisfied with the chart. The last time I talked with the general manager of the International Dressmaking Chart Company, I said to him, said I: 'Mr. Crampton, you could safely give a guarantee with every one of these charts—offer to refund the money to any one who is dissatisfied, and,' said I, 'I believe the only result of this would be an increased sale. You'd never have to refund a dollar. About a year ago I sold one to Mrs. Judge Graves in Shepherdsville; you may know her. Her husband's county judge, and they are two of the finest people you ever saw. The judge has a brother right here in town, Campbell Graves, the grocer. Your husband knows him, I'm sure. Well, I sold Mrs. Graves this chart a year ago, and I stopped there again on this trip just to say 'how d'ye do' and see how the chart was holding out. And she said to me: 'Mr. Roberts, this chart has saved me at least fifty dollars worth of dressmaker's bills in the last year. My husband thought, when I bought it, that five dollars was a good deal to pay for a thing like that, but' says she, 'he says now it was the best investment he ever made.' I had intended to make a thorough canvass of this neighborhood, but at twelve o'clock to-day, just as I was sitting down to my dinner, I got a telegram from the house telling me to go immediately to Shepherdsville. But I'd already ordered the horse and buggy, so I ate my dinner as quickly as I could, and said I: 'I'll drive three miles out into the country and stop at the first house I come to on the right-hand side of the road beyond the tollgate, and if I sell a chart there, I won't feel that I ran up a livery bill for nothing. And the first house on the right-hand side of the road beyond the tollgate happened to be yours, and that's how I came to give you all this trouble."
Here the agent paused with a pleasant laugh. He realized that the psychological moment was approaching, and he began gathering up the various parts of the chart with an air of extreme preoccupation. The gleam of a ruby ring on his little finger caught Mary Crawford's eye, and she noticed how white and well-formed his hands were, the hands of one who had never done any manual labor. She stood irresolute, fascinated by the gleam of the red jewel, and thinking of her little hoard up-stairs in the Japanese box in the top bureau drawer. Five dollars from thirteen dollars and sixty-five cents left eight dollars and sixty-five cents. It would be three weeks before John's birthday came. The hens were laying well, the young cow would be "fresh" next week, and that would give her at least two pounds more of butter per week. Then, the agent was such a nice-mannered, obliging young man; he had spent an hour teaching her how to use the chart, and she hated to have him take all that trouble for nothing.
She looked over at her husband, and her eyes said plainly: "Please help me to decide."
But John was blind to the gentle entreaty. He had fixed ideas as to what was a man's business and what a woman's; so he tilted his chair back against the wall and chewed a straw while he gazed out of the open door. His mental comment was: "If that agent fellow could work his hands just half as fast as he works his jaw, he'd be a mighty good help on a farm."
The agent looked up with a cheery smile. He had folded the chart, and was tying the red tape fastenings.