“It’s a good location here,” he said. Any one could have told him that it was the worst location within two miles.
“I’ll get it going presently,” he went on. “Of course it’s uphill just at first. Being such a good location the rent is high. The first two weeks I was here I was losing five dollars a day. But I got those lights in the window and got the stock overhauled a little to make it attractive and last month I reckon I was only losing three dollars a day.”
“That’s better,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” he went on, and there was a clear glint of purpose in his eye that contrasted with his sunken cheeks. “I’ll get it going. This last two weeks I’m not losing more than say two and a half a day or something like that? The custom is bound to come. You get a place fixed up and made attractive like this and people are sure to come sooner or later.”
What it was that was fixed up, and wherein lay the attractiveness I do not know. It could not be seen with the outward eye. Perhaps after two months’ work of piling dusty boxes now this way, now that, and putting little candles behind the yellow carboys to try the effect, some inward vision came that lighted the place up with an attractiveness wanting even in the glass and marble glitter of the Pharmacy across the way.
“Yes, sir,” continued the man, “I mean to stay with it. I’ll get things into shape here, fix it up a little more and soon I’ll have it,”—here his face radiated with a vision of hope—“so that I won’t lose a single cent.”
I looked at him in surprise. So humble an ambition it had never been my lot to encounter.
“All that bothers me,” he went on, “is my health. It’s a nice business the drug business: I like it, but it takes it out of you. You’ve got to be alert and keen all the time; thinking out plans to please the custom when it comes. Often I don’t sleep well nights for the rush of it.”
I looked about the little shop, as gloomy and sleepful as the mausoleum of an eastern king, and wondered by what alchemy of the mind the little druggist found it a very vortex of activity.
“But I can fix my health,” he returned—“I may have to get some one in here and go away for a spell. Perhaps I’ll do it. The doctor was saying he thought I might take a spell off and think out a few more wrinkles while I’m away.”