But they did—for a while. In football there’s a new hero, of larger or smaller caliber, every week or so, and Jimmy’s fame only lived until the Hillsport game the following Saturday, when Ned Richards sprinted sixty-odd yards for the score that evened up matters in the third period and turned what looked horribly like defeat into a 6 to 6 tie.
[CHAPTER XV]
MR. CROCKER CALLS
Russell didn’t see the Loring game, although there was no second team practice that afternoon to prevent. Instead he took Stick’s place in the store, allowing that youth to put in an afternoon at tennis, the only kind of physical exertion he approved of. Russell was glad that he had done this long before closing time arrived, for he spent a very busy time at the Sign of the Football. There was one heart-stirring quarter of an hour when, by actual count, seven customers lined the counter! Russell surreptitiously counted the throng a second time, incredulously certain that he had overestimated. Even femininity invaded the store when two high school girls came in search of sweaters. Russell, always shy in the presence of the opposite sex, was all thumbs when it came to displaying his wares and, for the first time, wished that he had not relieved Stick. Stick wouldn’t be disturbed in the least by the whole female population of Alton! Nothing, pursued Russell in his thoughts, as he clumsily brought a pile of boxes crashing down on his head, ever did disturb Stick much except an attack on his pocketbook.
The two young ladies were extremely self-possessed and viewed Russell’s embarrassment with a sort of kindly contempt. The boy’s first hopeful announcement that they carried no girls’ sweaters failed of the effect he desired. They did not, they explained calmly, want girls’ sweaters, but boys’ sweaters. After that there was nothing for it but to display wares, falteringly explain why the garments were priced half a dollar higher than similar garments purchased by the fair customers in New Haven two years before and resist a horrible temptation to wipe the perspiration from his brow. Russell heaped the counter high with boxes—some of them, of course, empty—and got very much mixed in the matter of sizes and prices. In the end, when the shoppers severely declared that they would take two of the sweaters but couldn’t think of paying the price set for them, Russell weakly but, oh, so gladly knocked off a quarter of a dollar, almost frantically wrapped the parcels up, overlooked a discrepancy of a nickel in one payment, and, had not courtesy forbade, would have joyously pushed them out the door.
When they were at last gone, he wiped his forehead, sighed deeply with heartfelt relief and wondered if it would not be a good idea to hang a card in the window with some such inscription on it as “Gentlemen Only” or “No Females Need Apply”! After that he sold a pair of woolen hose to an Alton chap and two tennis balls to a tall bespectacled gentleman who, Russell suspected, was the “Painless Dentist” further down the street. The hour for closing was nearing and Mr. J. Warren Pulsifer, who had been leaning in a sort of trance over his books in the wire cage since four o’clock, moved and sighed loudly. Then followed business of locking a drawer with much jangling of keys, the clanging of the cage door and the florist set his hat on his head, looked dubiously at the single light in the further window—Mr. Pulsifer never lighted his window—took three boxes from the glass-fronted case at the back of the store and passed out with a dismal “good night.” Those three boxes, which, Russell concluded, Mr. J. Warren Pulsifer was going to deliver in person, appeared to constitute the day’s business of the florist’s establishment. Russell wondered whether it was possible that the dejected gentleman made money over his expenses. It didn’t seem that he could, for the few orders that came to him surely did amount to more than thirty dollars a week. Russell’s thoughts were still on Mr. Pulsifer when the doorway was darkened by a large, thickset man in a suit of black and a wide-brimmed felt hat of the same color. When he came into the light from the window Russell recognized him.
“Good evening, Mr. Crocker,” he said politely.
Mr. Crocker replied affably and then looked curiously about him. “Your name’s Emerson, I take it,” he said finally. “Nice little establishment you’ve got here.”