As the early October days waxed and waned, Teddy trailed his quarry with the watchfulness of a sleuth. But Mr. Jarvis was not to be caught napping. His self-lauded efficiency guarded him like a sentinel. He buzzed, bubbled, nagged and tyrannized all in the name of the store. Whatever and whoever he set out to reform, he pounced upon with an awe-inspiring energy that none could combat. Even the Gobbler in her most offended moments could not out-gobble him.

“I never saw the beat of that man!” she exclaimed almost tearfully to Teddy. “I can’t do a thing to please him. Here you and me have spent pretty near a whole morning stacking these pans the way he wants ’em and now he says it’s not the way he told me. I’d go to Mr. Everett about it, but after what happened that other time I don’t like to. He has enough to bother him since this miserable fault-finder came down here.”

“It’s too bad,” sympathized Teddy. “Mr. Hickson told me what he did to Mr. Everett when you went to him. Never mind, Miss Newton, p’raps he won’t be here always.”

“He’ll be here long after poor Mr. Everett’s gone,” was the woman’s gloomy prediction. “He’s one of the under-handed kind that won’t play fair. When you think you’ve got him he switches things so as to make you look like the guilty one.”

“Sixty-five! Boy!” sounded the call.

“Gotta go. I hear his gentle voice. I’m awful sorry, Miss Newton. I’ll come back as soon as I can and help you.” With a genial nod of promise, Teddy trotted off in the direction of the call.

“Here, boy. Get these buckets out of the way.” Mr. Jarvis stood surrounded by a vast array of large galvanized pails. From an almost bare table, Sam Hickson was removing the last of them to a place on the floor beside others of their kind. The salesman’s close-cropped red hair seemed positively to be standing on end with rebellion. His good-humored mouth drooped sullenly, and he looked as though he yearned to say unutterable things.

“Get a step-ladder. Be lively now. These buckets must all be put in place instantly. I can’t understand why it should take so long to do such a simple task. I could have done it easily in ten minutes.”

“You couldn’t if you stopped to wait on customers,” flashed Hickson, coloring angrily.

“That’s no excuse. It should have been done before the customers began to arrive,” blandly reminded the assistant. “Now you are wasting time arguing. Get to work and fill this lower rack with buckets. By the time you’ve finished the boy will be here with the ladder. The idea of allowing all that space on those racks to lie idle!”

“Those racks are very unhandy for buckets,” retorted Hickson. “We tried them and the saleswomen had so much trouble reaching up to them that Mr. Everett said not to use them.”

“Never mind what Mr. Everett says. I am doing this. Don’t talk back to me, either. Get busy.” Mr. Jarvis took decided umbrage at the mention of Mr. Everett.

Hickson said no more. Fighting savagely for self-control he laid hands on a couple of the largest-sized pails and moved toward the despised rack.

“Not those large buckets,” objected the taskmaster. “Use your brain. The smallest sizes must go on the lower rack; the larger ones above.”

Hickson accepted the correction in morose silence and with a shrug of his broad shoulders endeavored to carry out instructions.

“Ah!” Mr. Jarvis emitted a satisfied cluck. “Here is our ladder. It took you long enough to get it, boy. I could have done it in half that time.”

“Could you?” Teddy simulated a solemn, wide-eyed admiration that nearly convulsed the abused Hickson.

“I could.” Mr. Jarvis took his questioner seriously. “Set it there. Now Mr. Hickson——”

“Young man, will you please wait on me?” A plaintive voice was heard at the assistant’s elbow.

“Certainly you shall receive attention.” Mr. Jarvis beamed patronizingly on the woman. “What can we show you this morning?”

“I’d like to look at a small oven. You see I do light housekeeping and——”

“What you need, Madam, is a fireless cooker. You have no idea of the time and labor you can save by installing one in your home. Now the fireless cooker which we principally handle is a marvel of——”

“I wouldn’t have one in the house.” The plaintive tones took on a shade of belligerence. “I came to see an oven and it’s an oven I want. If you don’t care to show it to me I guess I can go somewhere else. If I don’t know my own mind, then I don’t know who does.”

“Hickson, show this lady what she says she wants.” Mr. Jarvis lost interest suddenly in the customer. He waved her away as though in a hurry to be rid of her. “Here, 65, you can put these buckets on the top shelf. I will hand them up to you. Set the ladder right there. Now, hustle.”

Teddy ran up the five steps of the ladder with the agility of a monkey. The assistant seized a bucket in each hand, and, rising on his capable toes, delivered them to the waiting Teddy. For the next five minutes the efficiency man was in his glory. From a safe distance several salespeople watched the scene with scornful grins.

“I gotta move my ladder.” Teddy skipped down from his perch and shoved the ladder along a few feet.

“A little farther the other way. Right there. Now step lively. Two minutes more will see us finished.”

Teddy again ascended like a bird and waited. Four more buckets clanked to rest on the heights. Only a lonely duo now adorned the floor. Mr. Jarvis swooped down on them, then poised one of the pair in reach of Teddy’s thin fingers. Teddy gazed soulfully down upon the round, up-turned face of his helper. He leaned a trifle forward as though to take the bucket. The ladder gave a sudden, threatening lurch. In a wild effort to regain his balance, he waved the huge bucket over the efficiency man’s head. Very curiously it turned upside down and descended.

The remaining bucket in Mr. Jarvis’ hand left it and careered down the aisle with a wild rumble. But the bucket that had recently parted from Teddy’s hand was denied that pleasure. It had found a resting-place and remained fixed.

Then the delighted spectators to the moving scene were treated to a spectacle that furnished them with hilarious memories for many a long day afterward. The hitherto inanimate bucket became miraculously endowed with a short, pudgy body and a pair of furiously flapping arms that had formerly belonged to Mr. Jarvis. Down the aisle it staggered, crashing full tilt into a table of saucepans, a number of which bounced to the floor in noisy resentment of the invasion.

Stranger still, the magic bucket came into possession of speech. A tumult of unintelligible sounds, such as only an animate infant bucket could be expected to make, flowed forth from under it. Then its brief debut into the animate was over. Violently it severed connections with the body it had appropriated and hit the floor with a rattle and roll.

“Oh, Mr. Jarvis, did it hurt you?” Two round, solicitous, black eyes met those of the sputtering efficiency man. While Mr. Jarvis’ head was imprisoned in its galvanized cast, Teddy had indulged in a silent extravagance of glee that nearly spilled him off the ladder. He was now as solemn as a judge. Angelic pity shone from his freckled face.

“You—you——” Mr. Jarvis was absolutely bereft of speech suitable to the crime.

“I almost fell off the ladder myself,” comforted Teddy gently, “but accidents have to happen sometimes. I guess I better pick up those saucepans. If Mr. Seymour came along and saw them all over the floor he mightn’t like it.”

“What are all these pans doing on the floor?” a stern voice broke in. Mr. Everett had come upon the scene just in time to miss the accident. “See that they are put straight at once, Teddy. Such a litter is a disgrace to the department, Jarvis.”

Mr. Everett marched on down the aisle, secretly exultant that for once he had caught his obnoxious assistant to rights. The efficiency man’s face took on a poppy-red hue. For once he was dumb. The rapidity with which things had happened fairly dazed him.

“Pick up those pans,” he muttered. With one awful glance at the author of the disaster he took himself off to the far side of the department to think things over.

Teddy gazed dreamily after him. Reaching into his coat pocket he drew forth a tiny, leather-covered book. From another pocket he produced a stubby pencil. Resting the book on a step of the ladder he wrote briefly, “October 6. Canned the Percolator.” After it he made a long, black mark. “Some time he’ll stay canned,” was his sage prophecy.