“Don’t feel so bad about it, Kiddy.” It was the sympathetic Miss Welch who addressed Harry. Seated at the exchange desk she had witnessed Mr. Barton’s harsh, unjust manner of dealing with Harry. Her pretty eyes still snapped with angry sympathy as she tried to comfort the boy, who looked ready to cry.

Harry clenched his hands hard, and manfully swallowed the lump that rose in his throat. He was a sturdy boy and not given to tears, but now his sense of outraged justice was so great that they were very near to falling. “I—I——” he stammered, then stopped, fighting for self-control.

“Don’t I know you wasn’t to blame?” soothed Miss Welch’s kindly voice. “Ain’t I seen him get after other boys besides you, when they hadn’t done a thing? Don’t tell me. You don’t have to. I guess I know old Smarty Barty.”

Harry’s woe-begone face lightened a little at Miss Welch’s disrespectful reference to the formidable Mr. Barton.

“Oh, see the gloom break up!” she exclaimed in pretended astonishment. “I guess it’ll be a nice day after all. How about it, Kiddy?”

“I guess it will,” smiled Harry. Then he sighed. “I couldn’t help being late, Miss Welch. First an old man asked me where the perfumes were. I directed him to them, but he said I’d have to go with him to show him. I was afraid he’d report me, so I went with him. Then, just as I was coming through the book department, I bumped into a man with some books. The books fell to the floor and I stooped to pick them up. Then I came here as fast as ever I could, but I was ten minutes late. Now I’ve got three demerits on my card, and I wanted to keep it so nice—and—clean.” Harry’s voice broke.

“Never mind, Kiddy, never mind,” comforted Miss Welch. “Just let me put you wise, though. Don’t have nothing to do with these old fuss-budgets that want you to go on a personally conducted tour of the store with ’em. Answer ’em politely if they ask you anything, and then beat it out of their vicinity as fast as you can. They won’t report you. They wouldn’t know you from Adam if they saw you two minutes afterward. Course, you couldn’t help but pick up those books. You’re all right, youngster, and you just keep on being the little gentleman you are, no matter what fifty Smarty Bartys have to say.

“Now, cheer up. I’m goin’ to tell you something funny. ’Bout half an hour ago, while you was up to school, a long, thin, solemn-looking woman came up to the desk and says in a kind of a scared voice, ‘Is this the exchange desk?’

“‘It is,’ says I, ‘what can I do for you?’

“She hands me a big package and says, ‘I bought two little gold baby-pins here day before yesterday on a transfer, and when they come home they was two pairs of men’s overalls. They wasn’t no pins at all.’ Maybe I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t help it. When the woman saw me laugh, she grinned a kind of a sickly grin, too. Now, wasn’t that funny?”

Miss Welch leaned back in her chair and indulged in a fresh burst of laughter. “Ha, ha! That certainly was a good one on the Transfer Department,” she chuckled. “They certainly changed things around that time.”

Harry forgot his troubles and joined in the laugh. The sunshine cast by the good-natured exchange clerk had scattered his gloom for the time being, at least. “I’ll try harder than ever,” he thought, setting his boyish mouth firmly. “He sha’n’t give me any more demerits. I guess everybody has to learn things by experience.”

He was greatly surprised and not a little perplexed that afternoon when Mr. Barton beckoned to him from one of the aisles and said in an actually pleasant tone, “45, I want you to go on an errand. Here is a pass. Show this to the time-keeper as you go out. Come with me and I will tell you what you are to do.” Beckoning to Harry, he strode down the aisle, the boy at his heels. At the extreme end of the jewelry department was a small room in which Mr. Barton kept his personal effects. It had formerly been used by the buyer of the jewelry as an office. Now it held nothing but empty boxes and odds and ends that had drifted into it. Unlocking a small closet, Mr. Barton took from it a good-sized pasteboard box. “Here, boy, I want you to take this to 1855 Commerce Street. It goes to Jacoby’s tailor shop. Here’s his card. There’s a note in the box. Just ask for Mr. Jacoby, and say that Mr. Barton sent you. It won’t take you long.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Harry obediently. “Shall I go now?”

“Yes, and get back as soon as you can.” Mr. Barton’s grim features relaxed into what he evidently considered a pleasant smile.

Taking the box under his arm, Harry started toward the men’s coat room for his cap. As he walked, he examined the bit of paper. It was a printed form of store pass, and at the bottom was written, “On store business. Barton.”

The man at the time-desk examined the slip indifferently, made a mysterious mark on it with a red pencil, and shoved it back to Harry. It was not until Harry had left the store behind and walked at least a block that he took the card bearing the tailor’s address from his pocket and again glanced at the street and number. Martin Brothers’ store fronted on Commerce Street. It took up the entire space between numbers five and six hundred. But it was to number 1855 that Mr. Barton was sending him. Twelve long, city blocks lay before him. The boy looked rather dismayed; not because he objected to the long walk in the crisp, autumn air, but because of the time it would take him to go to the shop and return. Harry wondered vaguely if it were not customary to allow the messengers their carfare when on outside business for the store. Perhaps Mr. Barton had forgotten all about it. He was decidedly absent-minded. Even in the short time Harry had been stationed at the exchange desk, he had discovered that. Had he not heard Miss Welch scold frequently over Mr. Barton’s mistakes, due to his absent-mindedness? But he was so crabbed that she never dared call him to account openly for them. She had to content herself with throwing out barbed insinuations, to which he never appeared to pay the slightest attention.

Harry soon forgot his brief uneasiness over the distance to his destination and trudged briskly along the city streets, happy in being out in the fresh air. After twenty minutes fast walking he arrived at the shop. Over the door hung a large sign, which read, “A. Jacoby, Repairing, Cleaning and Pressing Garments While You Wait.” It was followed by a list of prices.

Harry delivered the box into the hands of a stout, gray-haired man with a red face and a decided German accent. The man opened the box. In it lay a blue serge suit. On top of the suit lay a note. The tailor read the note, then motioning Harry to a chair he said, “Sit down and vait. It vill be a little while only before I can do dot shob for Meester Parton.”

The old man took the suit over one arm and trotted off into an adjoining room with it.

Harry sat down obediently enough. He glanced curiously about him at the rows of suits, single coats and trousers that hung on racks set on three sides of the room, each garment bearing a large white tag. Harry always made it a point to be interested in all that he saw, but tailoring and repairing did not in the least appeal to him. After twenty minutes had passed he began to feel slightly impatient. Mr. Barton had said it would not take him long. When twice twenty minutes had slipped away, he grew uneasy. It had been twenty minutes past two o’clock when he left the store. It was now twenty minutes past three. A whole hour had vanished.

“Won’t Mr. Barton’s suit be ready soon, sir?” he asked the gray-haired proprietor politely, as Mr. Jacoby waddled into view at the sound of the door-bell.

“Ven it ees hready, I dell you, poy,” the old man returned placidly, then went on explaining, to a beetle-browed young man who had just come in, why it would be advisable to steam clean a much-soiled gray suit he had brought into A. Jacoby’s dominion for renovation.

Half-past three, then a quarter to four arrived. Harry fidgeted uneasily. He was in an agony of apprehension lest Mr. Barton might accuse him of playing along the way. At four o’clock, A. Jacoby waddled into the room where Harry sat in despair. The blue serge suit hung over one pudgy arm.

“You dell Mr. Parton he should pring his glose alhready sooner. Next dime he haf to vait until the next tay.” The old man was folding the suit in the box as he talked. It seemed to Harry that he was hours tying up the box. “Dell him he can bay me any dime,” he instructed Harry.

“Two hours in that shop, and it’ll take twenty minutes to get back to the store. Oh, if I just had a nickel.” He looked longingly at the cars as they lumbered by him, then squaring his shoulders he set off toward Martin Brothers’ Store almost on a run.

He thought the time-keeper eyed him rather suspiciously as he tendered his slip at the time-desk. He wondered if the man thought he had been loitering. But what would Mr. Barton say? That was the all-important question. Harry decided that if Mr. Barton accused him of playing along the way, he would suggest that he call A. Jacoby himself on the telephone and thus find out the time he left the tailor shop.

Harry hastily handed his cap to the boy who was on duty in the coat-room and hurried up the nearest stairway, two steps at a time. As he neared the exchange desk number 10, his eyes traveled over the jewelry department, in a search for Mr. Barton. Then suddenly he heard an indignant voice exclaim, “Well, 45, I wonder where you’ve been all afternoon!”

Harry whirled to face Miss Welch’s disapproving eyes. Her pretty face was not lighted by its usual smile. She looked distinctly out of humor.

“I didn’t think it of you, Kid,” she replied. “I thought you was a good boy. Here, when I’m as busy as can be, you go and lose yourself for all afternoon. I nearly ruined my voice hollering for you, and maybe Mr. Seymour ain’t mad. He flopped up here with some lady friend of his awhile ago. She wanted to exchange a ring and I had no boy to send with her to the department. He had to go himself. After she was gone he came back and I had to give him your number. He asked Smarty Barton where you was and he said he sent you to the stock-room half an hour ago, and you’d oughta been back. Now there’s just this about it, Kid. If you aren’t going to be on the job when I need you, then I’m going to ask for another boy. I’ve tried to be good to you and you ought to kinda look out for me and be Johnny-on-the-spot when I call, ‘Boy,’ without my wasting my breath and splitting my throat yelling for you.”

Harry stared at the ruffled exchange clerk in silent amazement. Could he believe his ears? What was it Miss Welch had just said about Mr. Barton?

“I guess you know you didn’t do right,” went on Miss Welch. “I certainly am su’prised and sorry.”

“Miss Welch,” Harry’s voice rose in excitement. “I wasn’t up in the stock-room. Why, I don’t even know where it is. I was out of the store on an errand for Mr. Barton.”

It was the exchange clerk’s turn to stare. There was absolute truth in the boy’s clear eyes. They met hers unflinchingly.

“Well, what do you think of that?” she muttered. “On an errand for old Smarty! Where’d he send you?”

“To a tailor shop on Commerce Street. I had to take a blue suit there to be pressed. I had to wait for it, and it took a long time. He gave me a store pass. I’m afraid he’ll scold me, though, for being gone so long. But I——”

“Scold you,” snorted Miss Welch. “Don’t you worry. He won’t scold you. The mean old reprobate! Here he sends you out on an errand for him and then tells Mr. Seymour he sent you to the stock-room. Oh, just wait till the next time he gets on his ear around here. I’ll hand him something. Now, you listen to me, Harry. I mighta known you was too good a kid to go playing hookey from your department. Don’t you ever go on personal errands for anybody but a real boss. No aisle man can send you out with his clothes or his laundry or to buy theatre tickets or anything like that. Some of ’em do it, I know, but they’re generally men enough to stand up and say so. If he tries it again, say ‘No,’ right out flat. Just like that. He can’t do a thing to you, because if he reported you he’d have to tell on himself. Catch him doing that!”

“But what shall I say if Mr. Seymour asks me about to-day?” queried Harry, his boyish face very sober.

“Tell him—let me see—tell him—the truth, of course. You don’t love Smarty Barton so much that you want to be a nice, gentle martyr for him, do you?”

“No-o-o, only I hate to—tell tales,” faltered Harry.

“Humph!” ejaculated the exchange clerk with deep scorn. “Well, wait and see. Maybe Mr. Seymour won’t think of it again. But you remember what I told you. No more errands for S. B. I’ll bet you he never gave you a cent of carfare, now did he?”

Harry shook his head.

“Can you beat it?” muttered Miss Welch. “Yes, lady, this is the exchange desk.” She turned to the customer who had asked the question. “Where’s your check? You’ll have to get the aisle manager to sign it.”

Harry moved a little away from the desk, still keeping within call. His honest young soul rebelled against Mr. Barton’s treachery. He made up his mind, however, that he would not betray the aisle manager if he could avoid doing so, provided Mr. Seymour should take him to task for his long absence from the floor. But he hoped with all his heart that Mr. Barton would not ask him to go on another similar errand.