Part 4 (1/2)

But there was yet work to be done. Drawing herself together with an effort, she hurried back to her table where the disorderly pile of books lay waiting to be rearranged.

”Speaking of happiness,” said Laurie, for all the world as if their conversation had not been interrupted, ”I don't see much use of writing a book on the hope for happiness when one may be happy right here and now.

Oh, I know there are those who sing:

”'This world's a wilderness of woe.

This world is not my home.'

”But that's religion, of a sort; mighty poor sort, too, I'd say. Idea being that this world's all wrong and that if you enjoy any of it, if the scent of spring blossoms, the songs of birds, the laugh of children at play, the lazy drift of fleecy clouds against the azure sky, if these things make you happy, then you're all wrong. I guess they'd say: 'Life here is to be endured. Happiness only comes after death.' Huh! I don't think much of that.”

”How can one secure happiness?” Lucile asked the question almost wistfully. She was over-tired and not a little perplexed.

”There's a lot of things that go with making people happy,” said Laurie as his nimble fingers flew from book to book. ”I'm quite sure that happiness does not come from long hours in a ball-room nor from smoking cigarettes, nor any one of the many things that put dark rings about the eyes of our young new rich or near rich, and that set their eyelids twitching.

”Happiness,” he mused, throwing back his head and laughing softly. ”Why, it's as easy to be happy as it is to tell the truth. Have friends and be true to them. Find a place you love to be and be there. Keep your body and mind fit. Sleep eight hours; eat slowly; take two hours for quiet thinking every day. Have a crowd you love, a crowd you feel that you belong to and fit in with. Of course they'll not be perfect. None of us are. But loveable they are, all the same.

”For instance, take the crowd here,” he said, lowering his voice. ”You and I are transients here. Christmas eve comes and out we go. But look at Donnie and Rennie, Bob, Bettie, and dear old Morrison over there in the corner. They're the regular ones, been here for years, all of them.

”See here,” he continued earnestly, ”I'll bet that when you came in here you had the popular magazine notion of the people who work in department stores; slang of the worst kind, paint an inch thick, lip stick, sordid jealousy, envy, no love, no fellows.h.i.+p. But look! What would happen if Rennie, the dear mother and straw-boss of us all, should slip before a car and be seriously injured to-night? What would happen? Not a soul of us all, even us transients, but would dig down and give our last penny to buy the things that would help her bear it. That's what I mean, a gang that you belong to, that you suffer with, endure things with and enjoy life with! That's the big secret of happiness.”

As Lucile listened to this short lecture on happiness, she worked. At last her task was done. Then with a hurried: ”Thanks awfully. Goodnight,”

she rushed for the cloak-room preparatory to donning the fur-lined cape.

She half expected to find it gone, but it was not, and after throwing it across her shoulders she dashed down the stairs to join the homeward rus.h.i.+ng throng.

As she snuggled down beneath the covers that night, she found her mind dwelling with unusually intense interest upon the events of the past two days. Like pictures on a screen, strange, unanswerable questions pa.s.sed through her mind. Who was the mystery woman of the night shadows in the book department? Why had Laurie given her his pa.s.s-out? Why had she left her gorgeously beautiful cape behind for a shop girl to wear home? How had the unusual crimson thread come to be drawn into the cloth of the cape? Had the mystery woman put it there? Had she drawn that thread through the page of Lucile's cash book? It seemed that she must have. But why? Why? Why? This last word kept ringing in her ears. Why had Laurie given up his pa.s.s-out? Where had he slept that night? How did it happen that an elevator in a department store at night ran of its own accord with no one to work the lever? Surely here were problems enough to keep one small brain busy.

Then again, there was the problem of the missing author of that wonderfully successful book. What did Laurie know about that? Why had he talked so strangely about it?

When she had allowed all these problems to pa.s.s in review before her mind's eye, she came to but one conclusion--that she would believe Laurie a sincere and trustworthy person until he had been proven otherwise. Her faith had been shaken a bit by the revelation of the night before.

”Life,” she whispered sleepily to herself, ”is certainly strange. Surely one who can talk so wonderfully about happiness can't be bad. And yet it's all very mysterious.”

Right there she concluded that mysteries of the right sort added much to the happiness of us all, and with that she fell asleep.

CHAPTER IV THE PICTURE GIRL

Little dreaming of the stirring events that awaited her, and without the slightest antic.i.p.ation of the new mystery and unusual responsibilities that were crowding in upon her that day, Lucile took her Monday morning train with the quiet composure of one who, having enjoyed a perfect Sunday of rest, looks forward with enthusiasm to a day of interesting service.

The supreme moment of that day arrived in a rather unusual place at a time when the clock's hands were nearing the hour of 1:00. Before that, however, there came hours of the usual toil which many would call drudgery. From eight-thirty until ten there were few customers. Every moment was taken up. Two truckloads of books had come down from the apparently inexhaustable storerooms above. These must be placed on the tables. Tables must be dusted; cash-books filled with blanks for the day; books out of place must be returned to the proper section.

As Lucile came and went in the performance of her allotted tasks, she was more and more impressed with what Laurie had said about this group of loyal friends, this company of sales-people who were so much like a very large family.

”They are all my friends, almost my kinsfolk,” she told herself with a little gulp of joy that was very near to tears.

And so they were. Even outside her little corner they greeted her with a comradely smile. There was the pleasing lady who sold new fiction, and the tumbled haired lady who sold travel books and had sold books in stores from coast to coast. In the first alcove was the worried lady who handled standard sets; in the second was the dignified one who murmured in low, church-like tones of prayer books and rosaries; while in the farthest, deepest alcove of all was dear old Morrison, the young-old man with premature gray hair and a stoop. But his l.u.s.trous eyes were lighted with an earnestness such as one seldom looks into, and he had an air of poise and refinement and a smile of perfect fellows.h.i.+p. He sold fine bindings, and knew them well. Besides that, he could tell you the name and publishers of every book for serious minded people published since the days of Ben Franklin.

Working among such people as these, and in spite of all her strenuous hours of labor, Lucile dreaded the coming of Christmas Eve when she must bid them all farewell and return to her studies. Never before had she been so tempted to relinquish her cherished hope of university training and to settle down to work among a host of interesting and loyal friends.

So the forenoon wore away, and with the pa.s.sing of each hour the great and startling event of that day came sixty minutes nearer.