The Pleasant Street Partnership | Page 2

into three lots and offered for sale.
What this might mean was at first hardly realized, until one day men
were discovered to be at work on the corner, digging a foundation.
Upon inquiry it developed that a drug store was to be built. The
neighborhood did not like this, but felt on the whole it might have been
worse,--this conclusion, as Wayland Leigh pointed out later on, being
founded on the mistaken hypothesis that all drug stores are pretty much
alike.
It happened that the druggist had for a brother a young and aspiring
architect, who conceived the idea of putting up a building in keeping
with a residence district. The result was a sloping-roofed structure
whose shingled second story projected over the first, which was of
concrete. It might have been a rural station, or post-office, or a seaside
cottage, but a drug store it did not remotely suggest.
The store opened on Pleasant Street; to reach the private entrance you
must go in from the Terrace, where there was a square of lawn and a
maple tree, relic of better days.
The worst of it was its utter incongruousness, the best--so Alexina
Russell said--that it invariably made you smile, and anything in this
weary world that caused a smile was not wholly bad. Miss Sarah Leigh
pretended to admire it, and declared she wanted to meet the architect.
Of all things she liked originality. Mrs. Millard heard her disdainfully.
Any departure from tradition was objectionable in her eyes, and she

was deficient in a sense of humor. Judge Russell complained that now
St. Mark's had taken to high-church customs, and the Terrace was
degenerating, it was time for him to be put away in Spring Hill
Cemetery.
Pretty Madelaine, his granddaughter, looked longingly toward Dean
Avenue, being divided between a desire for its new splendors and a
complacent consciousness that it was something of a distinction in
these days to live in the house where your father was born. Alexina, her
sister, treated this with scorn. She loved the shabby old house for other
reasons.
In spite of the original intentions of the builder, fate decreed that this
much-talked-of place was not to be a drug store after all, and early in
the summer, before it was finished, it was advertised for rent.
The plastering stage was beginning when the agent in charge one day
appeared conducting a young woman over the premises. If the agent's
manner revealed some slight curiosity concerning her, it was not to be
wondered at, for it was more than probable he had never before seen so
charming a person in the guise of a possible shopkeeper.
Her bearing was dignified and businesslike, and if a smile hovered
about her lips as they explored the odd little house, it did not go beyond
the bounds of a polite interest. At length she seated herself on an empty
nail keg in the shop, and became absorbed in thought. The agent leaned
against the door frame and waited.
"I shall want a few changes made if I lease it," she announced suddenly,
after some minutes of silence.
The agent started as her eyes met his. "Oh, certainly," he replied, as if
ready to agree without hearing what they were. On second thought he
added that the architect was at that moment coming up the street, and
the best plan, perhaps, would be to submit her wishes to him.
To this she graciously assented, and he left her. When he was gone, the
young woman's dignity relaxed. She smiled broadly; she even laughed.

"How ever did it happen!" she exclaimed.
She produced a tape-line and made measurements, then she stood with
the tip of her tongue touching her upper lip. "I do wish Marion could
see it," she said. "She will never believe what a fascinatingly funny
place it is."
She was surveying the neighborhood from the front door when the
agent returned, accompanied by the architect.
She wanted very little, she announced reassuringly; a fireplace in the
shop was the chief thing.
The agent suggested that it would be far more expensive to heat the
room with an open grate than with an anthracite base burner.
Whereupon she explained that an open fire was part of her stock in
trade, and it would be impossible to carry on her line of business
without one.
The agent ventured to inquire what her line was, and she answered with
a twinkle in her eye, "Notions."
The architect was doubtful about the fireplace, but not unwilling to
discuss it, and they grew so friendly over the matter that the agent
retired to the door and stared gloomily up the street.
From the fireplace the discussion turned to other things. As a possible
tenant, the young lady consulted the architect