Winnie Childs, the Shop Girl

								

"How rude of you!" Miss Devereux scolded in a whisper. "Don't mind
her, Mr. Rolls. She isn't a bit like the rest of us."
Peter had noticed that.
"She's always laughing at everything, and everybody, too," went on
Miss Devereux.
"She's welcome to laugh at me," said Peter. "I enjoy it."
"Ladies don't. She'd never do for a permanence with Mme. Nadine.
Clients wouldn't stand being grinned at by models."
"I don't laugh at people. I laugh at the world," the model defended
herself.
"Why?" inquired Peter, with a straight look at the queer, arresting
face.
"To keep it from laughing at me first. And to make it laugh with
me--if I can."
"Do you think you can?"
"I shall try hard--against the biggest odds. And whatever it does to
me, I shan't cry."
"I shouldn't wonder if that wasn't the whole secret of life!" said
Peter Rolls, continuing to look at the face.
Suddenly it flashed a smile at him. "Shouldn't you? Give me the Balm
of Gilead, and the rest would be easy!"
Peter was not stupid as a rule, yet he could not be quite sure what
she meant. If he guessed right, the rest wasn't as easy as she
thought. Yet the words made him wish that he could give the girl who
laughed--the girl who was not to be a "permanence" with Nadine--more
than a teaspoonful of balm.

CHAPTER III
AN ILL WIND

While the storm held, Peter Rolls went several times each dreadful day
to the room of the mirrors and dosed his dryads with Balm of Gilead.
The medicine--or something else--sustained them marvellously. And it
occurred to Peter that they would make a magnificent advertisement, if
there were any way of using them--the kind of advertisement his father
loved.
It was well that Peter senior was not on board, or he would certainly
propose a new feature for the balm department: scene, richly furnished
salon on a yacht; five fair effects in ball dresses sipping Balm of
Gilead; the whole arrangement on a rocking platform, with mechanism
hidden by realistically painted waves. But the dryads were previously
engaged by the prostrate Nadine--all except one.
When they were sufficiently restored to take an interest, Peter
smuggled grapefruit, chocolates, and novels into the nursery. The
novels his sister had brought with her to kill time during the voyage;
but as it happened, she was killing it with Lord Raygan instead and
never missed the books.
Nadine had been obliged to take first-class tickets for her models;
otherwise the rules of the ship would not have allowed them past the
barrier, even in the pursuit of business. But they sardined in one
cabin, near the bow, on the deepest down deck allotted to
first-classhood, and their private lives were scarcely more enjoyable
than the professional. They were, to be sure, theoretically able to
take exercise at certain hours, weather permitting; but weather did
not permit, and four of the dryads, when free, sought distraction in