The old man had come to the age when he lived mostly in the past. He liked to talk of the “glorious” days. “Things were lively around here then,” he used to say. “Why, for every dollar's worth I sell now, then I used to sell fifty dollars. They were the good old times!”
“But why?” questioned Ellie, bringing him sharply back to the present. “There are a lot more people here now and we should do better.” Then, with a gesture of impatience, “Uncle, there's no sense in it. We've got to get up to date. I don't blame Joe and Glenn for leaving. There's no future here.”
“Shucks!” said Job Lansing. “You don't know what you're talking about.”
But Ellie always managed to have the last word. “I'm going to do something! See if I don't!”
And she had done it!
For weeks, now, Job Lansing had been quite pleased with her. She had never been so reasonable. She had taken a great notion to cleaning up the store. Not that he approved of her moving the goods around; but still, it was a woman's way to be everlastingly fussing about with a dust-cloth. You couldn't change them.
He had decided that this new interest on Ellie's part came from the feeling of responsibility he had put upon her two months before when he had been called to Monmouth. His old mining partner was ill and wanted to see him. Before he went he gave his niece a few directions and told her how to make up the order for goods, that had to go out the next day. He rode away feeling that the business would be all right in her hands.
Now, as he stormed around the store, he realized why she had taken such an interest in the arrangement of the shelf space; why a gap had been left in a prominent place. It was for this silly stuff that wouldn't sell! He wanted to send it back, but, as it had been ordered, he would have to pay express on it both ways.
Ellie stood her ground, a determined expression in her face. She unpacked the heavy box and put the gay organdies and voiles in the places she had arranged for them. One piece, of a delicate gray with small, bright, magenta flowers in it, she left on the counter; and to the astonishment of the old man, she let a length of the dainty goods fall in graceful folds over a box placed beneath it.
This was one of the notions she had brought back from Phœnix, where she had gone on a spring shopping trip with Mrs. Matthews, wife of the superintendent at the Golden Glow mine. How she had enjoyed that day! Her eager eyes noted every up-to-date detail in the big stores where they shopped; but to her surprise, Mrs. Matthews had bought only such things as they might easily have carried in her uncle's store—plain, but pretty, ginghams for the Matthews' children, a light-blue organdie for herself, a box of writing-paper, and a string of beads for Julie's birthday.