The Serpent


Rose Wiley had the brightest eyes in Edgewood. It was impossible to look at
her without realizing that her physical sight was perfect. What mysterious
species of blindness is it that descends, now and then, upon human creatures,
and renders them incapable of judgment or discrimination?

Claude Merrill was a glove salesman in a Boston fancy-goods store. The calling
itself is undoubtedly respectable, and it is quite conceivable that a man can
sell gloves and still be a man; but Claude Merrill was a manikin. He inhabited
a very narrow space behind a very short counter, but to him it seemed the
earth and the fullness thereof.

When, irreproachably neat and even exquisite in dress, he gave a Napoleonic
glance at his array of glove-boxes to see if the female assistant had put them
in proper order for the day, when, with that wonderful eye for detail that had
wafted him to his present height of power, he pounced upon the
powder-sprinklers and found them, as he expected, empty; when, with masterly
judgment, he had made up and ticketed a basket of misfits and odd sizes to
attract the eyes of women who were their human counterparts, he felt himself
bursting with the pride and pomp of circumstance. His cambric handkerchief
adjusted in his coat with the monogram corner well displayed, a last touch to
the carefully trained lock on his forehead, and he was ready for his
customers.

"Six, did you say, miss? I should have thought five and three quarters--
Attend to that gentleman, Miss Dix, please; I am very busy."

"Six-and-a-half gray sue'de? Here they are, an exquisite shade. Shall I try