"Miss Epstein!" he bellowed, "step this way! Miss Epstein,
kindly show this here young man so he gets a line on the stock. He
is from Oskaloosa, Ioway. Look out she don't sell you a gold
brick, Louie."

But Louie was not listening. He was gazing at the V in Sophy
Epstein's dress with all his scandalized Oskaloosa, Iowa, eyes.

Louie was no mollycoddle. But he had been in great demand as
usher at the Young Men's Sunday Evening Club service at the
Congregational church, and in his town there had been no Sophy
Epsteins in too-tight princess dresses, cut into a careless V. But
Sophy was a city product--I was about to say pure and simple, but
I will not--wise, bold, young, old, underfed, overworked, and
triumphantly pretty.

"How-do!" cooed Sophy in her best baby tones. Louie's
disapproving eyes jumped from the objectionable V in Sophy's dress
to the lure of Sophy's face, and their expression underwent a
lightning change. There was no disapproving Sophy's face, no
matter how long one had dwelt in Oskaloosa.

"I won't bite you," said Sophy. "I'm never vicious on
Tuesdays. We'll start here with the misses' an' children's, and
work over to the other side."

Whereupon Louie was introduced into the intricacies of the
sample shoe business. He kept his eyes resolutely away from the V,
and learned many things. He learned how shoes that look like six