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 decision. He hung up his hat in the rear, remained there a while, and finally came out.

"That sale on boys' sport stockings starts to-morrow," he said to Sam. "Did you get them out and sort them by sizes?"

"Yes, sir."

"We'd better dress a window with those stockings to-night. There's a box of a dozen collars to be delivered before you go home." The voice was impersonal. And in the past he had always spoken to the clerk with the warmth of a co-worker.

Sam went forward to clear out one of the two windows. Bert took a step toward his father and stopped, for his father's eyes were regarding him fixedly.

"I . . . I never thought about Sam leaving here. I guess we had better drop this Shoppers' Service."

But his father, in a way that was new to him, would have none of this surrender. "Bert, you'd always blame me if you didn't go through with this; you'd always figure that you would have made a success of it if I had not stood in your way. You didn't come and ask my advice; you came and told me what you intended to do."

"But I can't take Sam; the store needs him."

"I don't want Sam, now. He isn't interested in my business to the exclusion of everything else. He wants to try something else. He says so. I've