When customers were rude, when Mr.John or Mr.Robert was overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the blue rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How easily with a word could I crush them!" But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button.
They thought it meant that David belonged to the Y.M.C.A.or was a teetotaler.

David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was liable to give that impression.
When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because, although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the person in whom the office took the greatest pride.

This was Miss Emily Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and prettiest stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found something in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours, accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring.
Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided when in a few months they would go upon their vacations they also would go upon their honeymoon.

And then a cloud had come between them, and from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.
The trouble befell when David discovered he had a great-great-grandfather.

With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive to achieve glory for himself.
From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a descendant of a national hero she expected other things.