The fust minit she come into my head I up and went straight along the Bowery, detarmined to find the place that she worked at, and see how she was getting along. I had forgot the number, but when I come to a store that was all windows in front, and that had a smasher of a bonnet hung agin every square of glass, besides beautiful caps and ribbons and posies as nat'ral as life, hung up between, I made up my mind that I'd hit the right nail on the head, and so in I went as independent as a wood-sawyer's clerk.
A leetle bit of a stuck up old maid stood back of a counter, all sot off with bonnets and feathers that looked tempting enough to make a feller's purse jump right out of his trousers' pocket. She had on a cap all bowed off with pink ribbons, that looked queer enough round her leetle wizzled up face, and a calico frock, figgered out with great bright posies, besides one of them ere sort of collars round her neck, all sprigged and ruffled off as slick as a new pin. Her waist warn't bigger round than a quart cup, and she stuck her hands down in the pockets of her dashy silk apron, as nat'ral as I could a done it myself. I was jest a going to ask if Susan Reed worked there, when a lady come in and wanted to buy a bonnet. At it they went, hand over first, a bargainin and a tryin on red and yaller and pink and blue bonnets.
The milliner she put one sort on, and then another, and went on pouring out a stream of soft sodder, while the lady peaked at herself in a looking-glass, and twistified her head about like a bird on a bramble bush, and at last said, she didn't know, she'd look a leetle further, mebby she'd call agin, if she didn't suit herself, and a heap more palavar, that made the leetle woman look as if she'd been a drinking a mug of hard cider.
While the lady was trying to edge off to the door, and the milliner was a follering her with a blue bonnet, and a great long white feather a streaming in her hand, I jest took a slantindicular squint at the glass boxes that stood about chuck full of jimcracks and furbelows, for there was something in one of 'em that raly looked curious. It was a sort of a thing stuffed out and quilted over till it stood up in the glass box as stiff and parpendicular as a baby's go-cart.
I jest put my hands down in my pockets sort of puzzled, and stood a looking at the critter to see what I could make on it. Arter I'd took a good squint at the consarn, up one side, down t'other, and down the middle, right and left, I purty much made up my mind that it was one of them new-fashioned side-saddles, that I'd heard tell on, and I took a notion into my head that I'd buy one and send it to marm. So when the leetle old maid cum back from the door, I jest pinted at the saddle, and sez I,
"What's the charge for that are thing?"
"Why, that pair," sez she, a sticking her head on one side, and a burying her hands, that looked like a hawk's claws, down in the pocket of her cunning short apron, "I'll put them to you at twelve dollars; they're French-made, 'lastic shoulder straps, stitched beautifully in the front, chuck full of whalebone—and they set to the shape like the skin to a bird."
Lord a massey, how the little stuck up critter did set off the talk! I couldn't shove in a word edgeways, till she stopped to git breath, and then sez I,
"I s'pose you throw in the martingales, sirsingle, and so on, don't you?"