Saturdays Child | Page 8

which she was not quite sure. Susan never tired of admiring the
swiftness with which hand, eye and brain worked together. Thorny
would stop in her mad flight, ponder an item with absent eyes fixed on

space, suddenly recall the price, affix the discounts, and be ready for
the next item. Susan had the natural admiration of an imaginative mind
for power, and the fact that Miss Thornton was by far the cleverest
woman in the office was one reason why Susan loved her best.
Miss Thornton whisked her finished duplicates, in a growing pile, to
the left-hand side of Miss Munay's desk. Her neighbor also did
"costing," but in a simpler form. Miss Murray merely marked,
sometimes at cost, sometimes at an advance, those articles that were "B.
O." or "bought out," not carried in Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's regular
stock. Candy, postal-cards, cameras, sporting-goods, stamps, cigars,
stationery, fruit-sirups, all the things in fact, that the firm's customers,
all over the state, carried in their little country stores, were "B. O." Miss
Murray had invoices for them all, and checked them off as fast as she
could find their places on the duplicates.
Then Miss Cottle and Susan Brown got the duplicates and "extended"
them. So many cases of cold cream at so much per case, so many
ounces of this or that at so much the pound, so many pounds at so much
per ounce, and forty and ten and ten off. Two-thirds of a dozen, one
hundredweight, one eighth of a gross, twelve per cent, off, and
twenty-three per cent. on for freight charges; the "extenders" had to
keep their wits about them.
After that the duplicates went to Miss Sherman, who set down the
difference between cost and selling price. So that eventually every
article was marked five times, its original selling price, extended by the
salesman, its cost price, separately extended, and the difference
between the two.
From Miss Sherman the bills went to the Misses Kirk, who gave every
item a red number that marked it in its proper department, drugs or
rubber goods or soaps and creams and colognes. The entire stock was
divided into ten of these departments, and there were ten great ledgers
in which to make entries for each one.
And for every one of a hundred salesmen a separate great sheet was
kept for the record of sales, all marked with the rubber stamp "B. O.,"

or the number of a department in red ink. This was called "crediting,"
and was done by Miss Wrenn. Finally, Miss Garvey and Miss Kelly
took the now limp bills, and extracted from them bewildering figures
called "the percentages," into the mysteries of which Susan never dared
to penetrate.
This whole involved and intricate system had originated, years before,
in the brain of one of the younger members of the firm, whose theory
was that it would enable everyone concerned to tell "at a glance" just
where the firm stood, just where profits and losses lay. Theoretically,
the idea was sound, and, in the hands of a few practiced accountants, it
might have been practically sound as well. But the uninterested,
untrained girls in Front Office never brought their work anywhere near
a conclusion. Several duplicates on Miss Thornton's desk were
eternally waiting for special prices, several more, delayed by the
non-appearance of invoices, kept Miss Murray always in arrears, and
Susan Brown had a little habit of tucking away in a desk drawer any
duplicate whose extension promised to be unusually tedious or difficult.
Girls were continually going into innocent gales of mirth because
long-lost bills were discovered, shut in some old ledger, or rushing
awe-struck to Miss Thornton with accounts of others that had been
carried away in waste-baskets and burned.
"Sh-sh! Don't make such a fuss," Miss Thornton would say warningly,
with a glance toward Mr. Brauer's office. "Perhaps he'll never ask for
them!"
And perhaps he never did. If he did, the office presented him a blank
and innocent face. "Miss Brown, did you see this bill Mr. Brauer
speaks of?" "Beg pardon? Oh, no, Miss Thornton." "Miss Cashell, did
you? " "Just-one-moment-Miss-Thornton-until-I-foot-up- this-column.
Thank you! No. No, I haven't seen it, Miss Thornton. Did you trace it to
my desk, Mr. Brauer?"
Baffled, Mr. Brauer would retire to his office. Ten silent, busy minutes
would elapse before Miss Cottle would say, in a low tone, "Bet it was
that bill that you were going to take home and work on, Miss Murray!"

"Oh, sure!" Miss Murray would agree, with a startled smile. "Sure.
Mamma stuck it behind the clock--I remember now. I'll bring it down
to-morrow."
"Don't you forget it, now," Miss Thornton would perhaps command,
with a sudden touch of authority, "old Baxter'd jump out of his skin if
he