“Very well,” cried Rose. Then, in an undertone: “Look the other way; there’s Netta Sachs. What a howling cad!” as a bouncing, gaily attired daughter of Shem passed them in the throng.
Rose was in her element; she was an excellent shopping-woman, loving a bargain for its own sake, grudging no time to the matching of colours and such patience-trying operations, going through the business from beginning to end with a wholehearted enjoyment that was good to see.
Judith, who had all a pretty girl’s interest in dress, and was generally willing enough for such expeditions, followed her cousin from counter to counter, with a little amiable air of abstraction.
Was there some magic in the autumn morning, some intoxication in the hazy, gold-coloured air, that she, the practical, sensible Judith, went about like a hashish-eater under the first delightful influence of the dangerous drug?
“What a crowd!” ejaculated Adelaide, coming up to them as she turned from the contemplation of some cheap ribbons in a basket.
She had, to the full, the gregarious instincts of her race, and Whiteley’s was her happy hunting-ground. Here, on this neutral territory, where Bayswater nodded to Maida Vale, and South Kensington took Bayswater by the hand, here could her boundless curiosity be gratified, here could her love of gossip have free play.
“We are going to get some lunch,” said Rose, moving off; “Judith has to go and see her people.”
She, too, loved the social aspects of the place no less than its business ones. Her pale, prominent, sleepy eyes, under their heavy white lids, saw quite as much and as quickly as Adelaide’s dancing, glittering, hard little organs of vision.
The girls lunched in the refreshment room, having obtained leave of absence from the family meal, then set out together from the shop.
At the corner of Westbourne Grove they parted, Rose going towards home, Judith committing herself to a large blue omnibus.