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"Why," he declaimed, "you poor little dried codfish, if it wasn't for me you'd never have a vacation. You trust old dad to handle Pilkings. We'll get away just as sure as God made little apples." "You mustn't use curse-words," murmured Mother, undiscouraged by forty years of trying to reform Father's vocabulary.
He clasped his hands, pressed them till the fingers of one gouged the back of the other. Father was not a Uriah Heep. At Pilkings & Son's he had often "talked back" to some of his best customers. But now he would gladly have licked Mrs. Vance Carter's spatted shoes. "No oh, bring us some lettuce sandwiches and some orange pekoe. I don't think we care for any doughnuts," said Mrs.
Father justified his shameless boast by compelling Mr. Pilkings to grant him the usual leave of absence, and they prepared to start for West Skipsit, Cape Cod, where they always spent their vacations at the farm-house of Uncle Joe Tubbs.
"Oh, do you really think they are safe?" breathed Mother, comforted. Admirable though Father was, he couldn't sit still. He was wearing a decorative new traveling cap, very smart and extensive and expensive, shaped like a muffin, and patterned with the Douglas tartan and an Etruscan border. He rather wanted to let people see it. He was no Pilkings clerk now, but a world-galloper.
Edward." He greeted his old acquaintances among the clerks. They were cordial, but they kept an eye on Mr. Edward Pilkings. He shivered as he walked out. It was warm and busy in the shoe-store, but outside it was rather chilly for a man with no overcoat or job. It seemed incredible that he should have found his one place of refuge closed to him.
When she was not busy, and he was not cutting wood or forlornly pecking away at useless cleanings of the cold and empty tea-room, they talked of what they would do. Father had wild plans of dashing down to New York, of seeing young Pilkings, of getting work in some other shoe-store. But he knew very little about other stores. He was not so much a shoe-clerk as a Pilkings clerk.
Two slices of home-made bread, I calc'late, don't cost more than three-fifths of a cent, I shouldn't think, and cream cheese to smear on them about half a cent; there's a little over a cent; and overhead 'course you wouldn't take overhead into account, and then you go and say I ain't practical and hatching chickens, and all, but let me tell you, Sarah Jane Appleby, I'm a business man and I've been trained, and I tell you as Pilkings has often said to me, it's overhead that makes or breaks a business, that's what it is, just like he says, yes, sir, overhead!
During his lunch-hours he frequented auction sales on Sixth Avenue, and became so sophisticated in the matter of second-hand goods that the youngest clerk at Pilkings & Son's, a child of forty who was about to be married, respectfully asked Father about furnishing a flat. He rampaged through department stores without buying a thing, till store detectives secretly followed him.
And they would have, Father chucklingly declared, "a bang-up dinner at Bomberghof Terrace, with music, and yes, by Jiminy! and cocktails!" For a week he awaited an answer, waited anxiously, though he kept reassuring himself that old Pilkings had promised to keep the job open for him. He received a reply. But it was from Pilkings's son.
"And it would be a just judgment on you for your high mightiness if you didn't get a vacation, and I don't believe Mr. Pilkings will give you one, either, and if it wa'n't for " "Why, I've got it right under my hat." "Yes, you always think you know so much more "
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