Papa was actually walking on air, between his residence in the Furness house and his magnificent new title as manager of the Store. He had cards printed with his name and a new middle initial he had added for style—“Mr. Harry J. Willard, General Manager, LONDON FURNITURE STORE, LONDON JUNCTION. YOUR HOME IS YOUR CASTLE, LET Us FURNISH IT. Undertaking Parlors.” The Store was the newest business building in the Junction, with plate-glass windows on one entire side, and the wholesale offices and catalog department located on the two floors above. A great billboard advertising the Store rose above the roof, giving a respectable impression of a five-story building to fascinated passengers whizzing by on trains. Papa took his daughters down to look over his new headquarters very soon after he settled there, but on the advice of his wife finally forbade them to come in the Store except on the most vital errand. It was too bad, for all three had spotted wonderful corners for play in the great showroom. There was a smell of varnish and new wood as soon as you stepped inside, and an impressive vista of glossy dining tables, buffets, Windsor chairs, settees, crowds of fat overstuffed chairs adorned with tassels, fringes, tapestry insets, and so pompous in their newness and overstuffedness that it must have taken great courage to invite one to take its place in a simple parlor with lesser pieces. Floor lamps and table lamps of all shapes and sizes were lit all day to demonstrate their charms; some were ingeniously attached to the arm of a chair, a smoking stand, or built into a center table. A mezzanine floor with elegant gold-trimmed balustrade held the many styles of beds from veneered bronze maple to burled walnut. The place really got its elegant tone, aside from its artistic furniture, from a Chinese incense burner hanging in the living-room suite department, blending its Sen-Sen and strawberry shrub fragrance with that of furniture polish and glue, also from the huge Victor Talking Machine with megaphone which boomed out richly over the Store and on to the street a perpetual chorus of “Come, Come, I Want You Only.” It was worth the price of admission just working in a place like that, Papa said happily, and with a treat like that on the premises he didn’t see how he could keep the customers out. His old Lesterville friend from the High Class Novelty Works dropped in one day (Mr. Taylor), and after a tour of the place shook his head and said it was too rich for his blood. He was so awed by the sight of Papa in white collar, black suit, and shiny black shoes, moving gracefully among all this luxury, changing the Victrola needle, relighting the incense burner, conferring with the mortician glibly on choice of coffin linings, that he skulked out of the place while Papa was still showing off, and was never seen in the Store again.

All in all the Willard girls felt that they had come into a fairy-tale world, and the town itself was impressed. Papa adopted a brisk but somber manner suited to his new position, kept away from the Elks’ Club and the London Junction Hotel, spoke to his former cronies from his traveling salesman and railroad life with the proper mingling of friendliness and aloofness. It seemed to him that every person he met in his day’s work was looking at him with awe and inwardly exclaiming, “Harry Willard, of all people! A self-made man, by George, a living success story. Said he’d make good and darned if he hasn’t. Leading citizen, top-notch businessman, well, well, well!” His daughters looked at him with reverence for this magic he had wrought. They bragged about it to their schoolmates and by night they gloated over it to each other.