and sugar and coffee and a ten cent sack of candy for the children. There were always a few loungers here and even in midsummer they stood from force of habit about the tall, rusty, pot-bellied stove, spitting tobacco juice into the little sawdust yard which surrounded it. While her father made his purchases and passed the time of day with the loungers about the stove, Judith would walk about looking at the bright-patterned calicoes and chintzes ranged on the shelves, the shiny dippers and saucepans, the straw hats and piles of blue denim overalls, the brooms standing upside down in a round rack, the gleaming hoes and rakes and shovels with bright-painted handles. Around the walls just below the ceiling ran a frieze of galvanized washtubs and tin plated boilers. The showcase stood on the counter near the door, and Judith, having passed all the other things in review, would flatten the end of her small nose against the glass looking at pink and yellow cakes of scented soap, barber's pole sticks of candy, bottles of ink, silk ribbons, tooth brushes, pads of letter paper, alarm clocks, pocket combs, and sheets of tanglefoot fly paper, arranged much as they have been here enumerated. She never tired of doing this. To her the store was a vast emporium capable of satisfying every human need or whim. She rarely teased Bill to buy her a ribbon or a toy, partly because she knew that he needed the money for horseshoe nails and flour; and partly because there was nothing here that she really wanted very much for herself. She felt no acute need in her own life for any of the contents of the showcase; but she regarded them none the less with deep respect and admiration.
Often Peter Akers, a baldish, pot-bellied man with a flabby face and old-fashioned sideboards, would lean across the counter with professional affability and chuck the little girl under the chin.
"Waal, Judy, you like to come in taown with yer dad? You'd best stay here an' keep store with me. Wouldn't you like to help keep store?"
Judith, looking straight at him with level, grave eyes, would answer never a word.
