“I don’t suppose I’ll get anything but the frames,” Black answered cautiously, as the two went out together. He had received an advance on his new salary, and therefore he had more money in his pocket than he had ever had before at one time, but he was too much in the habit of needing to count every penny to think of starting out to buy anything not strictly necessary. And already he knew Tom for the usual careless spender, the rich man’s son. Very likely, he thought, this place to which Tom was to take him was the most expensive place in the suburban town. On second thought, he decided to take along only two of his pictures—till he knew the prices he must pay.
It had not been a particularly busy morning for Jane Ray. She was occupied with only one customer at the moment when Robert Black and young Thomas Lockhart came down the side street upon which fronted her shop—a side street down which many feet were accustomed to turn, in search of Jane and her wares.
The customer with whom she was occupied stood with her at the rear of the shop before several specimens of antique desks and chairs. All about were other pieces, some of them proclaiming themselves rather rare. Jane Ray herself also looked rather rare—for a shopkeeper, inasmuch as she did not look like a shopkeeper at all, though the chaste severity of her business attire rivalled that of her latest acquired possession over which that morning she was gloating—a genuine Adam mirror. This mirror reflected faithfully Jane’s smooth, chestnut brown head, her slightly dusky skin with an underlying tinge of pink, her dark eyes which held a spice of mischief in spite of their cool alertness of glance, her faintly aggressive chin—which meant that she could argue with you about the value of her goods and hold her own, and in the end convince you, without making you unhappy about it—which is a rare accomplishment, especially in so young a woman as was Miss Ray.
Robert Black and Tom, the latter self-constituted guide to furnishing a manse with what might be called its superfluous necessities, entered the shop and stood waiting. Jane saw them in her Adam mirror, but she continued to discuss with her other customer the relative merits of a Chippendale desk having all manner of hidden springs and drawers in it, with those of a Sheraton pouch-table, a work-table with a silken bag beneath it, and essentially feminine in its appeal. The customer was making a present to his wife, and had fled to Jane in this trying emergency—as did many another man. Jane always knew.
“Isn’t this some place?” murmured young Lockhart, proudly, hanging over a glass show-case on a cherry gate-table. “Ever get into a woman’s shop that catered to men like this one? Look at this case of pipes—aren’t they stunners? She knows all there is to know about every last thing she sells, and what’s more, she never keeps anything but good stuff. Some of it’s pretty rare, and all of it’s corking. Look at those cats’ eyes!”
But Black had caught sight of certain headlines in a New York daily lying beside the case of semi-precious stones which had attracted Tom. It was a late morning edition, and this suburban town lay too far from New York for the later morning editions to reach it before early afternoon—anyhow, they were not to be had at the news-stands before two o’clock, as Black had discovered yesterday. He seized the paper, wondering how this woman shopkeeper had achieved the impossible. He was a voracious reader of war-news, this Scotsman by blood and American to the last loyal drop of it. But he was not satisfied with America’s part in the great conflict. For this was April, nineteen sixteen, and the thing had been going on for almost two years.
He devoured the black headlines.
“NO BREAK IN THE FRENCH LINES YET.
SEVENTH WEEK OF THE STRUGGLE AT VERDUN
TOTAL GAIN ONLY FOUR TO FIVE MILES
ON A THIRTY-FIVE MILE FRONT.”
He flamed into low, swift speech, striking the paper before him with his fist. Tom, listening, forgot to gaze upon the contents of the case before him.