“ And then she remembered Josie and Josie's sneer: "Poor old Debby. She never was a rose."
And now Josie was dead a year and more, and Josie's children and Josie's lover were submitted to her to take or leave. What a revenge it would be! What a squaring of old accounts! How she would turn the laugh back on them! How well she could laugh who waited to the last!
Then she shook her head. What had she to do with revenge? What meaner advantage could anybody take than to flaunt a dead enemy's colors? ”

“ The contrast between herself and Pamela was so cruel that Deborah's heart rebelled. She demanded of Heaven: "Why so much to her and none to me? My mother was as good as her mother, and better-looking in her day; and my father was a handsome man. Why was I made at all if not well made? Why allowed to live if not fit for life? My elder sister that died was more beautiful than Pamela, but she died. Why couldn't I have died in her place, or taken the beauty she laid aside as I wore her cast-off clothes? ”

“ You're not the woman I talked to at Asaph's, at all. You're like a girl–with silver hair–only you've got a woman's big heart, and you haven't the selfishness of the young, but that kind of wonderful sadness that sweetens a soul more than anything else."
Meldrum was as much amazed as Deborah was at hearing such rhapsodies from his matter-of-fact soul. ”

“ Jim Crawford's in love with you, the old scoundrel! But I won't let you marry him. I got a nicer house than what he has for you to live in, too. There's the childern, of course, but you like childern. They'd love you. They need mothering something awful. I been meaning to ask you to marry me, but I was afraid to. But I couldn't let you go. You won't, will you? I want you should marry me–right off. You will, won't you?"
Deborah stared at him agape. Then she cried: "Asaph Shillaber, are you proposing to me or quarreling with me–which?" ”

“ Deborah chanted, then repressed her cheer unconsciously. It was not tactful to be too well. "That is, I'm tol'able. And how are you this awful weather?"
"Not well, Debby. I'm not a bit well; no, I'm never well any more. Why, your hair is getting right white, isn't it, dear? But it's real becoming to you. Mine is all gray, too, you see, but it's awful!"
"Indeed it's not! It's fine! Your children must love it. Don't they?"
"Oh, the children!" Josie wailed. "What do they think of me? The grown ones are away, all flirting and getting married. They say they'll come back, but they never do. ”

“ She knew only that Josie was in disgrace with beauty and stared after her in wet-eyed pity. Who can feel so sorry for a fallen tyrant as the risen victim of tyranny?
A few weeks later Deborah went again to the Shillaber house, sat again on the sofa in the dining-room. The children had all come home. Josie was in the parlor, almost hidden in flowers. She did not rise to receive her guests. They all filed by and looked at her and shook their heads. She did not answer with a nod. Birdaline wept over her, looking older and terrified. But Pamela was wonderfully pretty in black. ”

“ Asaph assured her that he would never doubt that she knew at least that much. Then, like the wag he was, he said that he had added a new clerk to his staff–a lady and a beauty, whose charms would draw no end of custom to the store and dazzle the drummers from far and near.
Josie's facile temper flashed at once into glow. One of her chief interests in the Bazar had been to make sure that it never harbored any saleswoman whose beauty could possibly lure her husband's mind from his ledgers or his home ties. ”

“ Everybody was growing more neighborly nowadays.
Once more Mrs. Larrabee vanished. As she sat in the dining-room, pretending to knit, she thought how good it was to have a man in the house. The rumble of a deep voice was so comfortable that she fell asleep long before Asaph could bring himself to going home.
He had previously sought diversion in the society of some of the very young and very pretty salesgirls in his store, but he found that, for all their graces, their prattle bored him. They talked all about themselves or their friends. Debby talked to Asaph about Asaph. ”

“ Everybody's noticing how you honey-pie round her."
"Well, I danced with Deb Larrabee three times, too," Asaph pleaded. "Why don't you fuss about that?"
Deborah perked an anxious ear to hear how Birdaline would accept this rivalry, and Birdaline's answer fell into her ear like poison:
"Deb Larrabee! Humph! You can dance with that old thing till the cows come home, and I won't mind. But you can't take me to a party and dance three times with Josie Barlow. You can't, and that's all. So there!"
Asaph had a fierce way with women. He talked back to them as if they were men. ”

“ Then she turned on the sofa so that she could see him better. His eyes were twinkling. He was handsome, citified, sleek, comfortable. Yet he had never married!
He was holding out his hand. And because it commanded hers she put hers in it, and he squeezed her long, fishy fin in a big, warm, comfortable palm. And she gave her timid, smiling eyes into his big, smiling stare and wondered why she smiled. But she liked it so much that fresh tears rushed to her eyelids–little eager, happy tears that could not have had much salt in them, for one or two of them bounced into her ice-cream. ”

“ It's Debby Larrabee! I've engaged Debby Larrabee! They've lost all their money."
When Josie understood, she saw the joke. She began to laugh with hysterics, to slap and push her husband about hilariously. "Aw, you old fraud, you! So you've engaged Dubby Debby! Well, you can keep her. I don't care how late you stay at the store as long as Debby's there."
Deborah was fortunate enough not to overhear this. In fact, the long drought in Debby's good luck seemed to be ending. The skies over her grew dark with the abundance of merciful rain. ”

“ Yet I live, and I shall never be married, shall never be a mother, shall never be of any use or any beauty. Why? Why?"
Bitter, bitter were her thoughts as she sat with her plate in her lap. She hardly noticed when Josie took the plate away. She fell into an almost sleep of reverie and woke with a start to find that everybody else was crowding forward to hear Pamela sing. She was repeating "The Last Rose" by request. Mr. Maugans had said he would like another whack at that accompa'ment.
Debby felt again that stab of Birdaline's–"Poor Debby! She never was a rose." ”

“ Miss Pamela saved the day by a sudden inspiration, a recollection of what she had seen done by one of the leading sopranos from Indianapolis at a recital in the Star course at Peoria; Miss Pamela bent her pretty head and took from her juvenile breast one big red rose and held it in her hands while she sang. During the final stanza she plucked away its petals one by one and at the end let the shredded core fall upon the highly improbable roses woven in Josie's American Wilton carpet. ”

“ Newt Meldrum had prospered, according to Carthage standards. He was now the "credit man" for a New York wholesale house. Debby had not the faintest idea what a credit man was. But Asaph knew all too well. As the owner of the largest department store in Carthage, Asaph owed the New York house more money than he could pay. He gave that as a reason for owing it still more. The New York house sent Meldrum out to Carthage to see whether it would be more profitable to close Asaph up or tide him over another season.
Asaph's wife chose this anxious moment to give a party to Birdaline! ”

“ Under the pretext of purchases or suggestions she made frequent tours of inspection, and if a girl too young or a pair of eyes too bright gleamed behind a counter Asaph heard of it at once. Some years before he had bowed to the inevitable and made it a rule to engage no woman who could imaginably disturb Josie's delicate equipoise.
Meldrum had noticed the strange array and had been inclined to impute the decline of the store's prosperity to the appearance of its staff.
"Good Lord, Ase!" he had groaned. "What you got here–the overflow of the Home for Aged and Indignant Females? ”

“ How wonderful that she should be asked to marry the ideal of her youth–she, the laughing-stock of the other girls; and now she could have a husband, a home, and children of various ages, from the little tot to the grown-ups. She would never have babies of her own, she supposed, but she could acquire them ready-made. ”

“ If frankincense and myrrh had been shaken about the room Debby and Mrs. Larrabee could not have cherished them as they did the odor of tobacco in the curtains next day. Mrs. Larrabee cried a little. Her husband had smoked.
Deborah was only now passing through the stages the average woman travels in her teens and early twenties, Deborah was having callers. Sometimes two men came at once and tried to freeze each other out. And finally she had a proposal!–from Asaph!–from Josie's and Birdaline's Asaph! They had left him alone with Debby once too often. ”

“ We can all deal sharply with our friends, but we must be magnanimous with our foes.
No, it was impossible. Josie had suffered enough in the ebb of her beauty. Debby could not strike at her in her grave.
CHAPTER IX
She waited to announce her decision till Asaph should call again. Then till Asaph should call again. Then she told him what she had decided, but not why. He suspected every other reason except the truth. He was always a quick, hard fighter, and now Deborah had to endure what Josie had endured all her life. ”

“ There was a panic of another sort now, getting Debby's hands dry, her sleeves down, her apron off, her hair puffed, the lamp in the parlor lighted. Old Jim Crawford was some minutes older before he was admitted.
It was the first male caller Deborah had had since her mother could remember. The old lady received him with a flourish that would have befitted a king. That he was a widower and, for Carthage, wealthy may have had something to do with it. ”

“ On her way home Deborah began to doubt the possibility of it all. Asaph had been talking about somebody else, or he had been joking–he was such a terrible fellow to cook up things and fool people! Or else Jim Crawford was just making fun of Asaph. She would not tell her mother this news.
That night, as she was washing the dishes after her late supper, the door-bell burred.
"You go, mother, will you? My hands are all suds."
Mrs. Larrabee hobbled slowly to the hall door, but came back with a burst of unsuspected speed. She was pale with fright.
"It's a man!" she whispered.
"A man! ”

“ People like those can't sell pretty things. Send 'em all to the bone-yard and get in some winners."
Asaph promised, and Meldrum promised to arrange an extension of credit. But Asaph would have feared bankruptcy less than such a step. As soon as Meldrum was gone he put the cap-sheaf to his little army of relicts and remnants by engaging Debby Larrabee! She made the rest look handsome by contrast.
She was the joke that he tried to spring on his wife. Josie took the allusion seriously, and Asaph was soon trying to hold her down. ”

“ As Mrs. Shillaber often said, the one good thing about her old house was the fact that "you could throw the dining-room into the poller" when you wanted to give parties or funerals or weddings or such things. You had only to fold up the accordeon-pleated doors, push the sofa back against the wall, and lay a rug over the register.
To-night she had thrown the dining-room into the poller and filled both rooms with guests. There were so many guests that they occupied every seat in the house, including the up-stairs chairs and a large batch of camp-stools from Mr. Crankshaw's, the undertaker's. ”

“ And the young ones are so selfish and inconsiderate. It's awful, getting old, isn't it, Debby? It don't seem to worry you, though. I suppose it's because you haven't had sorrow in your life as I have. I'm looking for something to wear, Debby. The styles aren't what they used to be. There's not a thing fit to wear to a dog-fight in these new colors. What are people coming to? I can't find a thing to wear. What would you suggest? Do help me!"
Deborah emptied the shelves upon the counter, sent to the stock-room for new shipments that had not been listed yet, ransacked the place ”

“ The few hundred dollars that had come to them like semi-annual manna and quails would not drop down this year, perhaps not next year, or ever again. Their creditors would probably throw them into the town jail. The poorhouse would be a paradise.
In her distraction Debby had an impulse to consult Newt Meldrum. She hurried to Shillaber's Bazar, hoping he might be there. Asaph met her himself and told her that Newt had gone back to New York on an early train. Debby broke down and told of her plight. She supposed that she would have to go to work at once somewhere. But what could she do? ”

“ Poor Josie! But Birdaline! What was she so scared about?"
It was the very old triumphing over the old for meeting the same fate. In her own summer Mrs. Larrabee had been a rose and had shriveled on the stem.
That night Deborah thanked God that He had not lent her beauty. Its repayment was such ruin.
CHAPTER VII
The next morning the Bazar was open at the regular hour. Shoppers open at the regular hour. Shoppers came as numerously as before. People were as eager as ever to enhance their charms or disguise their flaws. In a few days Asaph Shillaber was again in his office. ”