“I’m just going to let it stay right there,” said Mrs. Peel, when Chub offered to get it down for her. “When you can buy gasoline for twelve or fourteen cents by the barrel and sell it for twenty cents a gallon, I think it pays real well. And you’d be surprised the number of automobiles go by here! I’ve been keeping track of them this morning, and there’s been three already. Didn’t any of them want any gasoline, I guess; leastways, they didn’t stop; but maybe the next one will; you never can tell. I took the sign out of the window, though,” she added, apologetically. “It didn’t seem just the thing, although it was certainly printed just lovely. I was wondering if you’d mind doing me another one instead. I was making up my mind to ask you, in case you came back again, just when you crossed the street.”
“I’ll be glad to,” said Chub. “What shall I print?”
“Well,”—Mrs. Peel folded her arms and pursed her lips—“I’ve heard folks say that down to Washington Hills it’s hard to get waited on at that store, and that half the time they get short weight. I guess that’s how that fellow down there can sell as cheap as he does. I thought you might just put on the sign, ‘Prompt attention, honest prices, full measure.’ What do you think?”
“That’s lovely,” said Harry, “and it’s all true, too!”
“Well,” said Mrs. Peel, beaming at the compliment, “I always have held that it pays to treat folks fair and square, leastway in the long run. That fellow down to Washington Hills is doin’ pretty well now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he got into trouble before many years are gone. Folks don’t mind being cheated for awhile, but they get tired of it in the end. There was a man came here last Fall with a lot of signs he wanted me to buy; cards, they were, that you put in the window and around the store. Awfully pretty, too; looked like pictures, most. But I didn’t take to them. Mostly they was signs like ‘Our Prices can’t be Beat’ and ‘As good as Any, Better’n Many’ and ‘Our Prices are the Lowest in Town.’ Well, course that last was true enough, because this is the only store here, but most of them was sort of prevaricating. I told the man so. I said if he had any real honest signs to fetch ’em out and I’d look at ’em. But, if you’ll believe it, he didn’t have one! My husband used to say that you could cheat a man once, and maybe twice, but you couldn’t cheat him the third time because he wouldn’t give you a chance. And I guess that’s about the way it is. I’ll get a nice big piece of cardboard, sir, and the marking pot.”
Chub took particular pains with that sign, ruling his lines and spacing his letters with a pencil before he set to work with the brush and the lampblack. And when it was finished it certainly looked fine.
“There,” said Chub, holding it out, “that isn’t so bad, is it? I’ve seen signs right in the windows of our stores at home that didn’t beat that much. That capital F looks sort of wobbly, but you wouldn’t notice it, I think.”
“It’s perfectly splendid!” said Harry, admiringly. And Mrs. Peel, who had watched the lettering with an almost breathless interest, fluttered off, in quite a tremor of excited pleasure, to find her spectacles.
“Looks just like it was printed on a printing-machine,” she exclaimed, when her glasses had been adjusted and she was alternately trying the effects of looking through them and over them. “I’m very much obliged, sir. I—I think I’ll put it in the window and see how it looks from outside.”