"Is it, though?" says Wiggins. "With more than five thousand employees on my payroll and a daily expense bill running well over thirty thousand, I find it far from petty. Anyway, it keeps me hustling. I used to think I was a hard worker too, when I had my one little general store at Smiths Corners."
"And now you've nearly a hundred stores!" says Aunty. "How did you do it?"
"I was kicked into doing it, I guess," says Wiggins, smilin' grim. "The manufacturers and jobbers, you know. They weren't willing to allow me a fair profit. So I had to go under or spread out. Well, I've spread,—flour mills in Minnesota, canning factories from Portland, Oregon, to Bridgeton, Maine, potato farms in Michigan and the Aroostook, cracker and bread bakeries, creameries, raisin and prune plantations,—all that sort of thing,—until gradually I've weeded out most of the greedy middlemen who stood between me and my customers. They're poor folks, most of 'em, and when they trade with me their slim wages go further than in most stores. My ambition is to give them honest goods at a five per cent. profit.
"If they all knew what was best for them, the Wiggins stores would soon become a national institution, and I could hand it over to the federal government; but they don't. If they did, I suppose they wouldn't be working for wages. So my chain grows slowly, at the rate of two or three stores a year. But every Wiggins store is a center for economic and scientific distribution of pure food products. That's my job, and I find it neither petty nor sordid. I can even get a certain satisfaction and pride from it. Incidentally there is my five per cent. profit to be made, which makes the game fascinating. Retire? Not until I've found something better to do, and up to date I haven't."
Havin' got this off his mind and the parcels done up, Mr. Wiggins walks back to answer the 'phone.
When he comes out again, in a minute or so, he's shucked the jumper and is buttonin' himself into a mink-lined overcoat.
"As a rule," says he, "we do not deliver goods; but in this instance I beg leave to make an exception. Permit me," and he waves toward the limousine.
It's the first time too that I ever saw Aunty stunned for more than a second or two at a stretch. She acts sort of dazed as he leads her out to the car and helps stow Vee and me and the bundles before gettin' in himself. Only when we pulls up in front of the studio buildin' does she come to. She revives enough to tell Wiggins all about this noble young Belgian sculptor and his wonderful work.
"Sculpture!" says Wiggins. "I'd like to see it."
And inside of three minutes Woodruff T. Wiggins, the chain grocery magnate, is right where we'd been schemin' to get him. He inspects the various groups of plaster stuff ranged around the studio, squintin' at 'em critical like he was a judge of such junk, and now and then he makes notes on the back of an envelope.