The short Thanksgiving holiday ended, Eleanor returned to college and Jean to school, found Constance busier than ever in her kitchen, for the holiday season was her hardest time, and this year promised to be an exceptional one. An extra supply of candy must be made for the booth in the Arcade, as well as for those who sold her candies on commission in other towns. Then, too, an unusual number of private orders had already come in. These all meant incessant work for Constance and Mary Willing.

The first week in December she entered the kitchen where Mary was just cutting into squares great masses of chocolate caramels. She had been hard at work all the morning, and her face was flushed from her exertions.

“Oh, I’m afraid you are nearly done up,” cried Constance, contritely. “You have been working so hard ever since eight o’clock, and it is now past eleven. I am so sorry to leave all this work to you while I do the easy part.”

“Do you call it easy work to write about two dozen letters, keep track of all the orders which are pouring in now, and run accounts straight?—to say nothing of ordering our supplies. I don’t, and I’m thanking my lucky stars that I can do my share of the work with a big spoon instead of a pen,” was Mary’s cheerful reply, as she raised her arm to push back from her forehead an unruly lock of hair which fell across her eyes.

“Let me,” said Constance quickly, lifting the soft strand into place. “You are all sticky, and when one’s hands are sticky that is the time for hair to grow rampant and one’s nose to itch! I’ve been there too many times myself not to know all about it, I tell you. But that isn’t what I came downstairs to say! Do you know that this pile of letters has set me thinking, Mary? If things go on at this rate you and I can never in the world handle the business. Why, it has taken me the whole morning to look after the letters and acknowledge the orders which came by the early mail. I haven’t been able to do one single stroke in here, and now I have got to go down to South Riveredge. Charles told Mammy that we ought to have more space there for our goods, and he wished I would see Mr. Porter about it at once. He thinks we ought to rent one of the other spaces for the Christmas season, anyway, and have someone there to attend to it. What do you think? And do you know of someone we could get? You see Christmas is only three weeks off, and whatever we do we’ve got to do at once.”

As Constance talked she wielded a big knife and helped briskly. Mary did not answer at once; her pretty forehead wore a perplexed pucker. At length she said:

“I know a girl who could take charge of it I think, although I don’t know whether you’d like her or not.”

Constance smiled as she answered: “Suppose you tell me who she is, then maybe I can tell you whether I like her or not.”

“It’s Kitty Sniffins. We used to go to school together.”

“I don’t know her at all, so I’m a poor judge of her qualifications, am I not? But if you think she is the sort of girl we would like to have there, I am sure she needs no other recommendation, Mary. What is her address?”

“Her brother is an insurance agent down on State Street. You might see him. They moved not long ago, and I don’t know where they live now.”

“Oh——,” exclaimed Constance, light beginning to dawn upon her. She had not heard the name Sniffins since the year in which she began her candy-making, as the result of the burning of their home, and the name had not figured very pleasantly in the experience of that October, or the months which followed. Still, the sister might prove very unlike the brother, and just now time was precious. If she was to act upon Charles’ suggestion she must act immediately.

“I think I’ll drop her a note in care of her brother; I don’t like to go to his office. She can call here,” said Constance.

Mary glanced up quickly to ask:

“Is there any reason, Miss Constance, why you would prefer someone else?” for something in Constance’s tone made her surmise that for some reason which she failed to comprehend Kitty Sniffins did not meet with her young employer’s approval.

“If I have one it is too silly to put into words,” laughed Constance, “so I will not let it influence me. I dare say Kitty Sniffins is a right nice girl and will sell enough candy to make me open my eyes. At all events, I’ll have a pow-wow with her. But before she can sell candy or anything else she must have a place to sell it in, and it’s up to me to scuttle off to the Arcade as fast as I can go. And, by the way, you’ve got to have more help here, Mary. Yes, you have. You need not shake your head. As matters are shaping I shall have to give every moment of my time to the business of this great and glorious enterprise. Now whom shall I get? What is Fanny doing this fall? She left school in the spring, didn’t she?”

“Yes. She is helping mother sew, but——” and an eager light sprang into Mary’s eyes. Fanny Willing was a younger sister, a rather delicate girl, who was growing more delicate from the hours spent at work in the close rooms of her home, and running a heavy, old-fashioned sewing machine. She was a plain, quiet little thing, very unlike her striking-looking older sister, and as such had not found favor in her mother’s eyes. In her younger days Mrs. Willing had boasted a certain style of beauty, and with it had contrived to win a husband whom she felt would elevate her to a higher social plane, but her hopes had never been realized. Probably every family has a black sheep; Jim Willing had figured as that unenviable figure in his. It was the old story of the son born after his parents had been married a number of years, and several older sisters were waiting to spoil him; plenty of money to fling about, a wild college career of two years, marriage with a pretty housemaid and—disinheritance. It had required only twenty-three years to bring it all to pass, and the next twenty-three completed the evil. At forty-six Jim Willing looked like a man of fifty-six—so can dissipation and moral degeneration set their seal upon their victims. Gentle blood? What had it done for him? Very little, because he had permitted it to become hopelessly contaminated. And his children?—they were working out the problem of heredity; paying the penalties of an earlier generation; demonstrating the commandment which says, “unto the third and fourth generation.” A cruel, relentless one, but not to be lightly broken.

In Mary was one illustration of it; Fanny another. Each was to “drie her weird,” as the Scotch say.

“Do you think your mother can spare her?”

“I’m sure she can. The fact is, Fanny has been trying to get some work in one of the shops in South Riveredge. Sewing doesn’t agree with her, somehow; she seems to grow thinner every day; she ain’t—isn’t, I mean—very strong, you see.”

“Will you send word to her, Mary? I think this sort of work will be better for her than the sewing, and we’ll talk about the salary when she comes over.”

“She’ll be a mighty lucky girl just to get here, salary or no salary!” was Mary’s positive reply. “If you don’t mind I’ll run down home this afternoon and tell her to come early to-morrow morning. I’ll have all this batch made, and the rest can wait until the morning; we’ve got a good lot ahead already.” Mary’s eagerness manifested itself in her every action, and Constance nodded a cheerful approval as she laid down her big knife and turned to leave the kitchen.

“Go ahead, partner, but I must be off now.”

“So the business is expanding?” exclaimed Mr. Porter, heartily, when Constance had explained to him her wish to rent an arch for her Christmas trade. “Good! I knew it would. Couldn’t possibly help it with such candy as that to back it up. But mind, you are not to forget my Christmas order in all your bustle and hurry for other people. Twenty pounds——”

“What!” cried Constance, aghast at the recklessness of her oldest customer.

“Now, that will do, young lady. Will you please answer me this! Why must I always be looked upon as a mild sort of lunatic when I give you an order? ’Twas ever thus! Why, you hooted my first order, and you have kept on hooting every single one since. I wonder I haven’t transferred my patronage long since. Trouble is you realize where you have me cornered. You know I can’t duplicate those candies anywhere. Now come along with me and let us arrange for the new quarters which are to replace the outgrown ones, and—mark my word—this business will never again contract to the old space. This is where my business acumen shows itself. Once I’ve got you into the bigger stand, and the rent into my coffers, I mean to keep you there, even if I have to get out and drum up the extra trade to meet the extra outlay. Co-operation.”

Constance was too accustomed to this good friend’s nonsense to see anything but the deepest interest for her welfare underlying it. She knew that, with all his seeming badinage, he was looking further ahead than she, with her still limited experience, even after four years in her little business world, could look, for her’s, while exceptional for her years and sex, could never match that of this man of the great, active business world. But if Mr. Porter was far-seeing in some directions, in others he was short-sighted, and his range of vision was to be broadened by one who dwelt in a far humbler walk of life—Mammy Blairsdale.

Upon this particular morning Mammy had elected to drive in state to South Riveredge, ostensibly to cast a critical eye over the Blairsdale-Devon Lunch Counter, but in reality to convey to it a very special dainty for her pet customer—Hadyn Stuyvesant.

In addition to a few hundred other side issues to her business, Mammy had raised poultry during the previous summer, and, curiously enough, to every chick hatched out, there had pecked themselves into the world about four roosters, until poor Mammy began to believe her setting eggs must have had a spell cast upon them. As the summer advanced such an array of lordly, strutting, squawking young cocks never dominated a poultry yard, and the sequel was inevitable. When they arrived at the crowing age the neighbors arose in revolt! Such a vociferous, discordant collection of birds had never fought and crowed themselves into public notice. Mammy became almost distracted, and was at her wits’ end until a diplomatic move struck her: those roosters should win not only fame for themselves, but for their owner also; and not long afterward first one neighbor then another was mollified and highly flattered to receive a fine daintily broiled, fried, or roasted young bird, cooked as only Mammy knew how to cook a fowl, garnished as only Mammy knew how to garnish, and accompanied by a respectful note, not written by Mammy, but by Jean, somewhat in this strain:

“Will Mrs. —— please accept this dish with the most respectful compliments of Mammy Blairsdale, who hopes this noisy rooster will never disturb her any more?”

Oh, “sop to Cerberus!” Could diplomacy go further?

It was one of the most vociferous of her flock which now lay upon his lordly back, his legs pathetically turned to the skies, his fighting and his squaking days ended forever, that reposed in Mammy’s warming can, to be transferred to Charles’ warming oven, there to await Hadyn’s arrival.

As Constance and Mr. Porter drew near the lunch counter, Mammy was giving very explicit directions to Charles. Constance and Mr. Porter were too occupied to be aware of her presence; not she of theirs, however.

Mr. Porter conducted Constance to the arch next but one to that in which the lunch counter stood, only separated from it by the cigar stand.

“Now here is a space which you can have as well as not, and it is close enough to Charles for him to cast an eye over it from time to time.”

“And may I rent it for one month?” asked Constance.

“Better rent it for one year,” urged Mr. Porter. “It’s in a mighty good location.”

“And I call it a mighty po’ location,” broke in an emphatic voice. “A mighty po’ one, and no kynd ob a place fo’ one ob ma chillen fer to be at. Gobblin men-folks hyar at de lunch stan’; smokin’ men-folks at de nex’ one; an’ we kin bress Gawd ef we don’t fin’ oursefs wid guzzlin men-folks on yonder at de tother side befo’ long.”

“Now, now! Hold on, Mammy! Go slow,” broke in Mr. Porter, laughingly. “You know the Arcade doesn’t stand for that sort of thing. Don’t hit us so hard.”

“How I gwine know what it boun’ ter stan’ fer if it lak ter stan’ fer lettin’ dat chile rint a counter nex’ door to a segar stan’?” snapped Mammy, her eyes fixed upon the luckless superintendent, personifying the strongly emphasized it.

“Well, it’s lucky we found you here. Now, we never took that side of the question into consideration, did we, little girl? Yes, I guess Mammy’s judgment beats ours. Great head! So come on, Mammy, and let us have your sound advice in this choice of bigger quarters for Miss Constance. You see, I predict that she will never return to the smaller ones again.”

“Don’t need no gre’t secon’-sight fer ter make dat out, I reckon,” was the superior retort.

Mr. Porter looked crushed and then dropped behind Mammy, who went sailing majestically down the Arcade, to stop at the very first and most pretentious of all the Arches—one which had been rented until very recently by a stationer, who had profited so handsomely that he had built a large shop not far from the Arcade, and now wished to sub-let this arch until his lease expired. Next to it was a florist’s stand, and opposite a stationer’s, each of a very high order. Constance stood aghast at Mammy’s audacity.

“Why, Mammy, this is the highest-priced arch in the Arcade,” she exclaimed.

“Well, what dat got ter do wid it, Baby? Ain’t your candy de highest-priced candy? An’ ain’ you de very high-water mark quality? Who gwine ter ’spute dat? Go ’long an’ rint yo’ place; yo’ all matches p’intedly,” and with this speech Mammy stalked back to her own quarters.

Constance gave one look at Mr. Porter, then sank upon one of the little benches within the arch.

“By George, she’s right and I’m a blockhead! Think I’d better turn over my job to her and go down into the engine-room until I learn to read human nature as she can. Yes, it is the finest, highest-priced arch in the building, but it didn’t take that old black woman five seconds to discover the match for it.”

“But, Mr. Porter,” protested Constance, “of all the extravagant steps, and for Mammy, above all others, to urge it. That conservative creature! And the way she expressed it! Why was I born a Blairsdale? It will shorten my years, I know, to have to live up to the name,” and Constance broke into a merry laugh.

“Perhaps the burden will be lifted before long, and such a calamity to your friends averted,” answered Mr. Porter, soberly, but with twinkling eyes. The one o’clock whistle had just blown in a building hard by, and the Arcade’s elevator was beginning to bring down the people from the floors above. Among them was Hadyn Stuyvesant, who went at once to the luncheon counter, quite unaware of the presence of a certain little lady near the entrance of the Arcade; but her back was toward the elevator. For one second she glanced at Mr. Porter entirely innocent of the purport of his words. Then, catching sight of the mischievous eyes twinkling at her, she rose suddenly to her feet, saying: “Come at once and let me learn what this rash step will cost me.”

With a low laugh Mr. Porter strode toward his office beside a very rosy-cheeked young girl.