CHAPTER II

WHAT CAME OUT OF A BIN

“No, Madam, you can’t settle your transfer here. You’ll have to go to that desk down there. Four aisles below.” Miss Welch’s indexing pencil pointed with a determination that invited the zealous clamorer for settlement to seek further. “Down there,” she repeated, as the woman fixed her placid gaze on a spot far up the aisle, then aimlessly wandered around a corner of the desk to implore fresh information from a nearby salesperson.

“Can you beat it?” muttered the disgusted exchange clerk. “Tell ’em to go down the aisle and they rubber up and don’t go neither way but sidle around the desk and hold up a sales. Just like that. If I was a---- Why, hel-lo, Kiddo!” Miss Welch’s monologue ended in a cry of pleasant surprise. “If it ain’t Harry Harding! Now where did _you_ drop from? Look at the boy! Growed an inch in two weeks; and see the tan. Some little vacation, _I_ guess. How about it?”

“Oh, Miss Welch, I’m ever so glad to see you.” Harry shook the exchange clerk’s extended hand with joyful fervor. “I was afraid maybe you’d be away on your vacation, and I wanted to see you.”

“Listen to the kid. He wanted to see me. Well, I’m exhibiting at the same old stand. Maybe I didn’t miss you, too, Harry. I got your postcard. I knew you couldn’t slight your old friend Irish.”

“Of course I couldn’t. Whenever I thought about the store, I thought of you and that was every day. I had a splendid time, but I’m glad to be back, though. When are you going on your vacation?”

“Not until the last of August. Martin Brothers just can’t bear to give me up. If you hear a noise like a roof falling in around the last of next month you’ll know I’ve went off for a two weeks’ hunting the joy-bug, and the shebang has collapsed.” Pretty Miss Welch’s dimples were in evidence as she made this astonishing statement.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if it would,” Harry responded with boyish gallantry. “I know books and jewelry’ll miss you.”

“So will Smarty Barty. He’s ordered black already. I hate to leave _him_, with the hate left out.”

Harry’s sensitive face clouded momentarily. The mention of his ancient enemy brought back the memory of long-unredressed wrongs.

“Is he pretty cross now?” was his sober question.

“_Now?_” Miss Welch’s eyebrows went up. “Take it from me, kid, he was born with crankitis and never got cured. He could take a bite out of one o’ them triple plate card trays over there and not hurt his teeth. But away with S. B. How’s the boy? You certainly look fine. I heard you speak your little piece up in Martin Hall. I was sorry I didn’t see you that night to praise you for the hit you made. Now tell me where you went and all about it.”

Harry responded with a brief but eager account of his vacation, to which the exchange girl kept up a running fire of encouraging comment.

“I’ll have to leave you,” he said at last. “There’s going to be a mid-summer sale, beginning to-morrow, and I’ve a lot of books to bring down from the stock-room.”

“Don’t forget Number 10,” was Miss Welch’s pertinent reminder, as he turned away. “Wedding presents, misfits and general junk exchanged while you wait.”

Smilingly Harry walked down the aisle in the direction of the elevator that would take him to the stock-room. How pleasant it was to see Miss Welch again, and to greet the members of his department. Yet on entering the store how strange it had seemed not to go to the assembly room for roll call. He and Teddy now reported at the regular time-desk for the men. Instead of being obliged to report at half-past seven o’clock, their time limit was set at eight. Not until the first of October would they again go to school; then only twice a week and after the business of the day was over. This last they had learned from Mr. Marsh when they had reported at his desk that morning.

As the elevator came to a jiggling stop, and the boy was about to step in, a tall figure loomed up beside him, brushed him out of the way as though he had been a troublesome fly, and crowded into the cage ahead of him. Only the flashing of his blue eyes betrayed Harry’s annoyance at the rudeness. The next second the car was speeding upward, but that second revealed to the boy the author of the discourtesy. It was Mr. Barton who had thrust him aside. If the crabbed aisle manager was aware of the lad’s presence in the car, he gave no sign of it. His scowling face was fixed on the operator’s back and when the car stopped at the fifth floor he fairly bolted out of it.

“Pipe that old crank?” The operator, a youth of perhaps twenty years, turned to Harry with a grin. “He’s a sick man, he is. Pretty near every mornin’ he hits my car about this time and beats it for the hospital. His ugliness has struck in an’ gives him a pain, I guess.”

“Do you know him?” Harry looked his surprise at learning Mr. Barton’s destination.

“Sure I know him. So do you. I run this car the day he took you up to Prescott’s office. That was some crime, but you got clear all right. I heard about it. A guy downstairs tipped me off.”

“It was a mistake all around.” Harry was too much of a man to take advantage of the opportunity to disparage the unjust aisle manager. “Why does he go to the hospital so much?” he inquired, with a view to leading the operator away from the unpleasant past.

“He’s got the dis-pep-shy. The pep’s struck to his stommick and makes it ache. I heard him tellin’ another floor-walker ’bout it one morning. He can’t get nothin’ to cure it. Too bad, ain’t it? I’d turn on the salt water, but cryin’ hurts my eyes,” he concluded with a derisive grimace.

“No wonder he’s so cross. I never knew he had dyspepsia.” In spite of his dislike for Mr. Barton, Harry could not help feeling a trifle sorry for the unfortunate victim of so painful a malady.

“I wouldn’t lay awake nights thinkin’ about it,” was the operator’s succinct advice as Harry stepped out of the cage at the tenth floor.

“I never lie awake nights thinking about anything,” he retorted sharply. The boy’s utter lack of sympathy jarred on him. He could not help wondering, as he made his way to the section reserved for the book stock, whether, after all, Mr. Barton could really be blamed for his perpetual snarling. Long since he had forgiven the aisle manager for the injustice which had merely been the means of placing him under the guidance of Mr. Rexford. His ready sympathy awakened by what he had just heard, Harry was sure that if at any future time his path should cross Mr. Barton’s, he would be charitable enough to make allowances.

“Hello!” he exclaimed. “What’s been happening here, I’d like to know.” His active mind swung from the subject of Mr. Barton’s woes to confront a most astonishing change in the stock designed for the sale, which he had arranged so neatly before starting on his vacation. In the bins where order had reigned supreme, the hapless volumes were jumbled together in reckless confusion. Uneven piles of books, that the lightest touch would scatter, rose from various points on the floor. Wherever his eye chanced to rest, Harry marked plentiful signs of dust. The hand of neglect lay heavy upon his treasures, and he emitted a low whistle of consternation as he investigated a nearby bin in which crazily commingled an expensive edition of the great poets and a quantity of low-priced books for boys.

His whistle at least was productive of instantaneous results. Hearing a sudden shuffling sound behind him, he whirled. From a bin at the lower end of the stock-room a black, tousled head emerged. It was followed by a long, wiry body that gradually straightened itself. A pair of thin arms stretched themselves lazily. From under a thatch of black, rumpled hair two half-shut black eyes resentfully viewed the newcomer. The stretching process continued, and a wide mouth opened more widely in a yawn.

“Whada you want?” came the ill-natured challenge, issued between yawns.

“Who are you?” Harry returned in crisp, business-like tones.

“I’m the stock boy. Who you whistlin’ for? What’s missin’ downstairs? A fellow can’t more’n get up here until somebody’s after him.”

“The stock boy!” Harry’s tone registered incredulity. “How long have you been stock boy? Where is Fred Alden?”

“How do I know where he is? I’m no direct’ry. I’ve been here a week, but that’s none of your business. If you’re talkin’ about the kid that had this job before me, he’s left.”

“Why did he leave?” Harry’s eyes grew wide at this news.

“Ask the employment office. Now whada you want? I got a lot to do and I can’t stop to fool around with you.”

“You seemed to be very busy--sleeping when I came here.” Harry launched this barb merely by shrewd guess.

It struck home. The tall boy’s sallow face grew red. He made a menacing step forward. “Cut that out,” he growled. “Say what you’re after and beat it.”

“So _you_ are the new stock boy.” Harry regarded the other lad with a calm, unfearing glance. “I must say that I am surprised. As it happens, I came up here to _work_. So I’m going to stay. I can see that I shall find plenty to do. If you’ve finished your nap it might be a good idea for you to get busy, too.”

“You’re a fresh kid.” The tall boy continued to advance threateningly, his fists doubled for battle. “Are you goin’ to get out?”

“No; I’m not. You might as well put down your fists for I sha’n’t fight you. I’m here to work, not to fight. I’m not the least bit afraid of you. If you _must_ fight, I’ll meet you anywhere you like outside the store.”

For a moment the two boys faced each other in silence, Harry coolly defiant, his adversary too greatly enraged for speech. The determined glint in Harry’s eyes, backed by his fearless demeanor, warned the bully to caution. Step by step he backed slowly away from the fight for which he apparently yearned. “I’ll fix you yet, freshie,” he muttered. Turning a prudent back on danger he shuffled toward the bin he had recently occupied and began pitching into it the tottering heaps of books that lay nearest to his ruthless hands.

“This is a nice mess,” was Harry’s inward comment, as he stood speculating where to begin the much-needed reform. “How did Mr. Rexford ever happen to hire such a stock boy? I’m surprised that Mr. Atkins hasn’t reported him. Somebody must have been asleep at the switch or that lazy bully would never be working for Martin Brothers.”

With a sigh he dropped to his knees and began a piling up of the famous poets, preparatory to transplanting them to their proper sphere. To find Henry W. Longfellow sandwiched between “The Boy Castaways of Snake Island” and “Umbasi, the Zulu Chief,” was an outrage that called for instant reparation. He wished now that he had stopped to make a few general inquiries before coming to the stock-room. Knowing that Mr. Rexford was seldom in the department before nine o’clock, he had lingered on the selling floor after receiving his orders from the assistant buyer only long enough to greet a few of the salespeople and to speak to Miss Welch.

A repeated whacking and banging of books at the lower end of the stock-room conveyed to Harry the fact that the unwilling laborer had decided to work. The precise value of his noisy effort was yet to be determined. Harry was not optimistic regarding the final result. From what he had already discovered it was likely to be a thorough jumble. But where was Mr. Atkins, who had charge of the incoming shipments of books and who attended to the marking of their prices? It was not in the least like him to allow a stock boy to thus neglect the surplus stock. Harry now remembered that he had not seen the man about as he passed through the receiving room.

“I hate to go and tell tales the minute I come back to the store,” was his reflection as he energetically delved and straightened the untidy bins. “Perhaps they’ve kept this fellow so busy he hasn’t had time to set things straight. But just the same he was asleep. I know he was. If he’s going to be so lazy, I’ll work hard and keep the stock looking nice anyway. That is, unless he loafs all the time. I’m going to find out who he is and all about him. Mother says it doesn’t need to make much difference to one what other people do or don’t do. It’s what one does or doesn’t do oneself. I’m going to do my work just as if I were the only stock boy here. If this boy isn’t playing fair with Martin Brothers, somebody will be sure to find it out and without my saying a word about it to anyone.”