Jason found himself entering the store behind him. It proved to be a drug store. He bought a glass of milk shake, and sitting down at the counter, he began a conversation with the clerk as he drank. He started by remarking upon the wonderful growth of Bluffport—how many new buildings and how attractive they were. Then he came to the point which concerned him.
“In all the tidying up you’ve done here in the past four or five years, I don’t see anything to beat this establishment or the one just across the street. I’d call that the kind of an enterprise that wouldn’t look so bad in Indianapolis or Chicago,” he said.
“And that’s a funny thing,” said the clerk. “Ever since I was a little shaver running around town, Nancy Bodkin has been in the millinery business here. Good years she managed to make ends meet and bad years she didn’t. And I’ve heard here lately that she was just at the point of going bankrupt and giving up in despair when along comes a stranger in town and they get to work together.”
“Oh,” said Jason, “then the stranger represents the ‘and Company’?”
“Yeh,” said the clerk, “represents the ‘and Company.’”
“And the ‘and Company’ had money to pull the concern up to a corner building and all that foxy millinery and ladies’ fixings?”
“No,” said the clerk. “That’s the funny part of it. The ‘and Company’ came in and went to work as she stood. There’s been quite a bit of talk among the womenfolks off and on, but nobody has ever discovered, either from the ‘and Company’ or from Nancy, where she came from or how she happened to come. She didn’t have anything but herself, but she knew how to wash windows and how to clean up. I can remember that I saw her myself the day she climbed on a store box and started painting the front of Nancy Bodkin’s store with a bucket of paint and a brush. When she got it painted on the outside as far as she could reach, she painted it on the inside. She had such a knack of selling goods and she was so keen about buying, that in no time at all they pulled right out, and now look where they are!”
“You think they did it all by themselves?” persisted Jason.
“Sure of it,” said the clerk. “So’s every one else. They didn’t get a cent of help from any one; the banker says so. This ‘and Company,’ whose name happens to be Marcia Peters, marched into the bank and told the banker what she was going to do and she told it so convincingly that he believed her. He loaned her what she needed for her first order of millinery, on the strength of her face and her convincing talk. It shows what a couple of women can do if they put their heads together and decide that they’ll do it.”
Without realizing precisely what he was doing, Jason reached up and took off his hat. He hung it over one of his knees and sipping at the milk shake, he sat looking across the street. He could see Marcia moving back and forth behind the counters. Once she followed a customer to the door and stood talking a minute, her face full of interest and animation. She looked the proud, competent, confident woman of business. He was possessed of an impulse to cross the street and say to her: “Mother, I am glad that you are getting along so finely. I’m gladder than I’ve any words to tell you that you are capable of taking care of yourself.”