Everybody in the United States had heard of Peter Rolls, or it was not the fault of the magazines and Sunday papers.  Peter Rolls had been for years one of the greatest advertisers in America.  Mr. Winfield didn’t see how, even on a remote little island like England, Miss Child could have escaped hearing about Peter Rolls’s hands.  This had now become the snappy way of saying that you intended to shop at Peter Rolls’s store:  “I’m going to the Hands.”  “I’ll get that at the Hands.”  And Peter Rolls had emphasized the phrase on the public tongue by his method of advertising.

Each advertisement that appeared took the same form—­a square space heavily outlined in black or colour, held up by a pair of ringed hands, facsimiles in miniature of his famous sky sign.  And the several thousand salespeople in the huge store were slangily nicknamed “Peter Rolls’s hands.”  But naturally these insignificant morsels of the great mosaic were not spelled with a capital H, unless, perhaps by themselves, and once when a vaudeville favourite sang a song, “I’m a Hand, I’m a Hand.”  It was a smart song, and made a hit; but Peter Rolls was said to have paid both the star and the management.

Apparently nothing concerning Peter Rolls, Sr., and his family was hidden from Mr. Loewenfeld and Miss Seeker, although they claimed no personal acquaintance with the great.  Probably, if Win had asked, they could have told how many servants Mrs. Rolls kept and how many cases of champagne her husband ordered in a year.  But questions were unnecessary.  The subject of a self-made millionaire was a fascinating one to the lately naturalized German.

Peter Rolls, Sr., had emigrated from the north of Ireland as a young boy.  He had contrived to buy a few cheap odds and ends likely to attract women buried in the country far from shops.  He had somehow known exactly what odds and ends to select.  That was genius; and he had coined money as a peddler.  In his wandering life he made acquaintance with many tramps and saw how he might make even the lowest useful.  After a few years he scraped up enough capital to start a small store in New York, far downtown, where rents were cheap.

Like his peddler’s pack, the store was stocked with odds and ends.  But again they were just the right odds and ends, the odds and ends that every one in that neighbourhood wanted and had never been able to obtain under one roof.  No article cost less than five cents, none more than a dollar, and it was marvellous what Peter Rolls could afford to sell for a dollar.

“I Can Furnish Your Flat for Ten Dollars.  Why?  Because I Work with My Own Hands,” was Peter Rolls’s first advertisement.  And the Hands had never lost their cunning since.