safe to talk of our business outside."

After a moment's thought she concluded: "I really think that the proper
arrangement of everything in the store as to light, display, and effect,
so that people of taste will be pleased when they enter, would add
thousands of dollars to your sales; and this rigid system of old
Schwartz's, which annoys us both beyond endurance, will be broken up."

Won over by arguments that accorded with his inclinations, Mr. Ludolph
gave his daughter permission to carry out the plan in her own way.

She usually accompanied her father to the store in the morning. He,
after a brief glance around, would go to his private office and attend
to correspondence. She would do whatever her mood prompted. Sometimes
she would sit down for a half-hour before one picture; again she would
examine most critically a statue or a statuette. Whenever new music
was received, she looked it over and carried off such pieces as pleased
her fancy.

She evidently was a privileged character, and no one save her father
exercised the slightest control over her movements. She treated all
the clerks, save old Schwartz, as if they were animated machines; and
by a quiet order, as if she had touched a spring, would set them in
motion to do her bidding. The young men in the store were of German
descent, and rather heavy and undemonstrative. Mr. Schwartz's system
of order and repression had pretty thoroughly quenched them. They were
educated to the niches they filled, and seemed to have no thought
beyond; therefore they were all unruffled at Miss Ludolph's air of
absolute sovereignty. Mr. Schwartz was as obsequious as the rest, but,
as second to her father in power, was permitted some slight familiarity.