"Just what I was telling Mr. Black," she said sweetly. "I told him that, if he ever expected to get people to work whole-heartedly with him, he would have to let them share in his profits."
"And his losses?" broke in Mrs. Larsen.
"Yes, and his losses. For instance, take the case of Mr. Larsen and Mr. Jones—and Jimmie," she said, looking at the last-named with a twinkle in her eye. "They have all had to bear some of Mr. Black's losses; and it was a case of either sharing the loss or Mr. Black getting some one else to share it, for, if he had paid them what they were worth, he would have failed, and you see then they as well as Mr. Black would have all been out of work. As it is, I really think my husband has turned the corner, although it's only six months since he took over the store. . . . And it has been a pretty busy six months, hasn't it, Mr. Larsen?"
"You bet it has," he returned heartily.
"And a pretty happy six months?"
"The happiest I have had in my life!"
"Well, I think," Betty continued, "that we are going to have many more happy months; and one reason we asked you all here was to let you know so; because, you know, Mrs. Larsen, your hubby can't work well for Mr. Black unless he has your help, just the same as Mr. Black can't work well without my help. . . . These men are helpless things without us women to cheer them up, aren't they, Mrs. Larsen?"
"That's so," she nodded, thawing under the sunshine of Betty's words. "I tell my husband sometimes he is a fool, and I don't know how people endure him, but he's good to me." Then she stopped, embarrassed, for she had made her first remark without "bristling."
"I know this, Mrs. Larsen," said Betty, "that no man is worth much in business, unless he has a good woman at the back of him, to help and encourage him. . . . You agree with me, don't you, Mr. Jones?"
His answer was to blush red and sheepishly grin, first at Betty, and then at Elsie.