"Now, Herbert, when a customer like that comes in, it is the time to get off old goods. Those people that come from up the mountain know nothing about the styles, and we always depend upon selling our old stock out to that class of customers. That chenille net would have pleased the girl better and wore longer than the one she bought, and she would have taken it, if you had not been silly enough to tell her nobody wore them now."
"But she asked me if they were fashionable," said Herbert.
"Of course she did," returned Mr. Wynn. "They always ask such questions, and part of your business is to know how to answer them. We always have a great many of that class here upon holidays, and if you are shrewd, you may make large sales of goods desirable to be disposed of, and which will satisfy them quite as well as goods that are more constantly called for. You need not look so grave about it. Don't you see that we can sell these goods for less money, and often suit their tastes far better. And if they are satisfied, what is there wrong about it?"
Herbert made no reply, but the thought in his mind was, "I can't do it. I can't say a thing is so when it isn't."
A few days later, a similar circumstance occurred. Mr. Wynn was much displeased, and said, "I cannot allow this. If I have occasion to speak of the matter again, I shall feel obliged to ask your father to take you away."
Herbert had thought over the subject and prayed over it, and made his decision. "Mr. Wynn," he said, "I am sorry to displease you, but I think the only right way for me to do is to speak the truth, and I must do it, if I say anything."
Mr. Wynn was angry, but he was always calm and dignified; he said, quietly, "Very well; call things by whatever name you please. Your father placed you here to learn the business, but if you already know so much more than I do about the proper mode of conducting it, there is no necessity of your remaining here any longer. You are free to go at once. I will see your father this evening."
Poor Herbert! Discharged! Disgraced! He had not anticipated quite that. In resolving to do right, he had expected that God would stand by him and reward him for his faithfulness to the truth. He had asked God to show him the right way and to keep him from all evil as he walked therein. He had looked for deliverance in the hour of trial. Had God failed to hear?
He, too, had yet to learn something of God's ways of answering prayer. Mr. Bradford's office was two or three doors down the street from the store, and Herbert went at once to his father with his story, telling it in a straightforward style, without a word of exaggeration or blame. "Father, did I do right?" he asked.
Mr. Bradford hesitated. He was called an honest man; he called himself a Christian, and though less worldly-minded than Mr. Wynn, he had not Herbert's ardent love of truth, but he could not look in his boy's face and say that he preferred to have him retain his position at the expense of falsehood and trickery. When he spoke, it was with an embarrassed laugh.