第14章 KISSES AND KLEPTOMANIA(4)

"We found her wandering about our store to-day in a very nervous condition.In her excitement, she carried away about one hundred dollars' worth of rare laces.Not recognizing her, our store detective detained her for a short time.Fortunately for us all, Mrs.Gaskell was able to explain who she was, and she has just gone to her home.Hoping for Mrs.Gaskell's speedy recovery, and with all good wishes, I am, "Yours very truly."Yet, though he had completed the letter, Gilder did not at once take up another detail of his business.Instead, he remained plunged in thought, and now his frown was one of simple bewilderment.A number of minutes passed before he spoke, and then his words revealed distinctly what had been his train of meditation.

"Sadie," he said in a voice of entire sincerity, "I can't understand theft.It's a thing absolutely beyond my comprehension."On the heels of this ingenuous declaration, Smithson entered the office, and that excellent gentleman appeared even more perturbed than before.

"What on earth is the matter now?" Gilder spluttered, suspiciously.

"It's Mrs.Gaskell still," Smithson replied in great trepidation.

"She wants you personally, Mr.Gilder, to apologize to her.She says that the action taken against her is an outrage, and she is not satisfied with the apologies of all the rest of us.She says you must make one, too, and that the store detective must be discharged for intolerable insolence."Gilder bounced up from his chair angrily.

"I'll be damned if I'll discharge McCracken," he vociferated, glaring on Smithson, who shrank visibly.

But that mild and meek man had a certain strength of pertinacity.

Besides, in this case, he had been having multitudinous troubles of his own, which could be ended only by his employer's placating of the offended kleptomaniac.

"But about the apology, Mr.Gilder," he reminded, speaking very deferentially, yet with insistence.

Business instinct triumphed over the magnate's irritation, and his face cleared.

"Oh, I'll apologize," he said with a wry smile of discomfiture.

"I'll make things even up a bit when I get an apology from Gaskell.I shrewdly suspect that that estimable gentleman is going to eat humble pie, of my baking, from his wife's recipe.

And his will be an honest apology--which mine won't, not by a damned sight!" With the words, he left the room, in his wake a hugely relieved Smithson.

Alone in the office, Sarah neglected her work for a few minutes to brood over the startling contrast of events that had just forced itself on her attention.She was not a girl given to the analysis of either persons or things, but in this instance the movement of affairs had come close to her, and she was compelled to some depth of feeling by the two aspects of life on which to-day she looked.In the one case, as she knew it, a girl under the urge of poverty had stolen.That thief had been promptly arrested, finally she had been tried, had been convicted, had been sentenced to three years in prison.In the other case, a woman of wealth had stolen.There had been no punishment.Aeuphemism of kleptomania had been offered and accepted as sufficient excuse for her crime.A polite lie had been written to her husband, a banker of power in the city.To her, the proprietor of the store was even now apologizing in courteous phrases of regret....And Mary Turner had been sentenced to three years in prison.Sadie shook her head in dolorous doubt, as she again bent over the keys of her typewriter.Certainly, some happenings in this world of ours did not seem quite fair.