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Already Win had learned that a "lemon" or a "pill" was a customer who made as much trouble as possible for as small as possible a return; but it gave her a stab to hear Peter Rolls's great department store called a "sweat shop." Again she saw the eyes. Was she never to get rid of the memory of those hypocritical blue eyes?

He looked rich enough to buy Peter Rolls's star doll, price five hundred dollars, with trousseau. Nevertheless Miss Child determined to outwit him. "What kind of a doll?" she asked in a business-like tone, showing no sign of recognition. "For a small girl or a large girl? And about what price do you wish to pay?"

Only her subconscious sense of humour, which warned her it would be ridiculous from Peter Rolls's "saleslady" to Peter Rolls himself, made her bite back the words that rushed to the end of her tongue. "You have a strange idea of putting things delicately!" she cried. "You offer me a reward if I if I oh, I can't say it!" "I can," volunteered the old man coolly.

It was not until she had applied for work at six other shops, and found herself too late at all, that it began to seem faintly possible for her to think of going to Peter Rolls's father's store. When the idea did knock at the door of her mind hesitatingly as Peter junior used to knock at the dryad door, the Hands' advertisement for help was the last of its kind in the papers.

"This is mighty good of you!" A thousand thoughts whirled after each other through the girl's head, like the mechanical horses on a circular toy race course, such as she had often sold at Peter Rolls's. Round and round they wildly turned for an instant, then began to slow down. This house was closed for the summer. The front was boarded up, and perhaps the back windows also.

This idea, passing through several phases, had shaped itself clearly in Peter Rolls's mind by the time the policeman's round black head had come up from under the table. And it was because of the idea that he sat down deliberately on the film of chiffon.

Morning and girl were gray with cold as Win hovered before the vast expanse of plate glass which made of Peter Rolls's department store a crystal palace. Customers would not be admitted for an hour, yet the lovely wax ladies and the thrilling wax men in the window world wore the air of never having stopped doing their life work since they were appointed to it.

"Does he still 'work with his own hands?" quoted Win at last, feeling half guilty, as if she ought not to ask questions about Peter's father behind Peter's back. But the affairs of the Rolls family seemed to be public property. Mr. Löwenfeld and Miss Seeker both laughed. "I should love," said the latter, "to see Ena Rolls's face if her father did work!

At last the procession had moved on so far that this girl arrived at the lighted window. Win's heart, which had missed a beat in a sudden flurry of fear now and then, began to pound like a hammer. For the first time she could see the god in the machine, the superintendent of Peter Rolls's vast store, a kind of prime minister with more power than the king.

No longer was it a room of mystery; yet romance, once awakened, cannot be put to sleep in a minute, and Peter Rolls's heart beat with excitement or shyness, he was not sure which, as Lady Eileen O'Neill knocked at the dryad door. It was the worst possible moment for the dryads.