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Used to be in business. Pilkings & Son's, little old New York. Me and old Pilky practically started the business together, as you might say." "Well, well, well, well!" The shoeman stared in reverent amazement. Then, as he could think of nothing further to say, he justly observed, "Well!" "Yump. That reminds me. Make that boy of yours rearrange that counter case there.
Father was a perfectly able clerk in Pilkings's shoe-store on Sixth Avenue, and Pilkings was so much older than Father that he still called him, "Hey you, Seth!" and still gave him advice about handling lady customers. For three or four years, some ten years back, Father and Mr. Pilkings had displayed ill-feeling over the passing of the amiable elastic-sided Congress shoe.
For perhaps two weeks after the Carters' visit they pretended that the tea-room was open, and they did have six or seven customers. But late in September Father got his courage up, took out the family pen and bottle of ink, the tablet of ruled stationery and a stamped-envelope, and wrote to Mr. J. Pilkings that he wanted his shoe-store job back. When he had mailed the letter he told Mother.
When he smiled in a superior way and said nothing, people immediately believed that he must have been places, done brave things. He didn't so much bluff them as let them bluff themselves.... He had never been able to do that in his years as a foggy-day shadow to the late J. Pilkings.
"I didn't hear from you again been waiting thought maybe I'd get a letter I hope he has recovered I know how bad the grippe " While he was talking he realized that Edward Pilkings was in mourning. Young Pilkings looked shallowly grieved and muttered, "The old gentleman passed beyond, a week ago Thursday." "Oh, Mr. Edward, I can't tell you It's a blow to me, a very great blow.
She was as used to loneliness as a hotel melancholiac; the people they had known had drifted away to far suburbs. In each other the Applebys found all life. In July, Father began his annual agitation for a vacation. Mr. Pilkings, of Pilkings & Son's Standard Shoe Parlor, didn't believe in vacations. He believed in staying home and saving money.
Father and Mother had started out from New York on a desperate flight, with no aspirations beyond the hope that they might be able to make a living. It was the hobo, Crook McKusick, who taught Father that there was no reason why, with his outdoor life and his broadened experience, he should not be a leader among men wherever he went; be an Edward Pilkings and a Miss Mitchin, yea, even a Mrs.
Her voice had a crisp briskness which it had lacked in the days when she had brooded in the flat and waited for her man. Father could not face another indefinite period of such inactivity as had been sapping him all summer. He longed for the dusty drudgery of Pilkings & Son's; longed to be busy all day, and to bring home news and money to Mother at night.
It had been as important a part of his duties, these many years, to know what to say to Mr. Pilkings as to know what to show to customers. Surely when Pilkings, senior, was well he would remember his offer to keep the job open. Mother cautiously began to suggest her plan.
He planned to wave and attract the chauffeur's attention, but in face of the prodigious Mrs. Carter he never dared to carry out the plan. September 1st. The Applebys had given up hope of miracles. They were making up their minds to notify Mr. Pilkings, of Pilkings & Son's Sixth Avenue Standard Shoe Parlor, that Father again wanted the job he had held for so many years.
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