Once again the Captain offered his hand. “You’re a lad after my own heart,” he rumbled. “I’ve two places I want to show you, and I’m sure you’ll like them both.”
CHAPTER VIII
DOWN A BEAM OF LIGHT
Grace Krowl, the girl from Kansas, found plenty of things to occupy her thoughts as she sank into a chair in one of the two small rooms allotted to her on the upper floor of her uncle’s store in Chicago.
“A store in Chicago.” She laughed low. Her uncle’s store in Chicago. What dreams had she not dreamed of this store? Chicago was a grand city. His store must be a grand place. She had of late pictured it as a six-story building; pure fancy, for he had never written about its size or importance. In fact, he had not written at all until she had written first and asked for a position as clerk in his store. He had been married to her mother’s sister. The sister was dead.
When Grace had needed work badly she had written, and he had replied briefly: “I can give you work at fifteen dollars per week and board.”
So here she was. And her uncle’s store was little more than a hole in the wall. No counters, no glass cases. Things piled in heaps, and all secondhand; glass dishes here, bed covers there, dresses, sheets, towels, everything. And in the corner, like so many skeletons, a great pile of bruised, battered and empty trunks.
“He buys trunks, other people’s trunks.” She shuddered afresh.
Then the words of her new-found friend of the bookstore came to her. “Diamonds, stocks and bonds.” These were dreams. “But rare old books, wonderful bits of Irish lace, why not?” Perhaps, after all, she could drive away the ache that came in her throat at the thought that someone who truly loved these things had lost them because they were poor.
She thought of her own trunk and laughed aloud. What a sight that must have been—she snatching at her prized possessions and those other women poking her and banging her on the head!
Of course it had all been a mistake. She had come to Chicago by bus and had sent on her trunk by express. The van that went for her trunk had also picked up a half dozen others which her uncle had bought at auction. The trunks had become mixed. The lock had been pried off her own and the contents were being sold when she arrived. Everything had been retrieved except a pearl-backed brush she prized and a hideous vase she abhorred.