They are used to all sorts of strange nationalities along the water-front in San Francisco, but not, as a rule, in the milliners' and modistes' well-bred establishments. Vaiti concentrated the whole attention of the place upon herself at a single stroke. She did not care about that in the least, but Madame's hesitation stung her, and she pulled out a thick wad of notes.
"Look 'em alive, my hearties!" she ordered impatiently in her quarter-deck voice. "Lay aft here with that goods. I want um Palisi model, all sort."
The customers were nearly in hysterics by this time, and the assistants were all a-giggle. Madame herself, however, grasped the situation in a twinkling, and frowned down the girls. Whoever and whatever this pirate queen might be, she certainly had money, and Madame would have welcomed Lucrezia Borgia or the Witch of Endor, under like circumstances, as pleasantly as an Anglo-American duchess.
"Perhaps Madame will come into a private room. Madame would like, no doubt, to look at our most exclusive goods, and we do not bring them into the outer shop," she said in her most honeyed voice. And the door of the lift closed upon the pair.
What Vaiti underwent in that fitting-room in the course of getting into Madame's latest model promenade gown, built for a typical French figure, will never be told. Early in the proceedings a message came down to the showroom for the strongest pair of Paris corsets in stock, and a little later Madame herself, very red and overheated, ran down to select a fresh silk lace.
"Ah, but she has courage, that one!" she declared, as the lift received her again. "Never, no, never!—jamais de la vie! ..."
The lift went up.
It was almost an hour before a wonderful vision sailed slowly through the show-room and out into the street—slowly, not alone for pride, but also because it could scarcely move or draw its breath. The vision, as described in the receipted bill that went with it, was made up of the following elements:
"One promenade costume (model, Doucet & Cie.) composed of chiffon velours, couleur poussière de roses, inlet with motifs of point d'Alençon, hand-embroidered with lilies of the valley in French paste. Mounted on chiffon bleu-de-ciel, with full volants edged lace and chiffon ruching. Made over foundation of glacé silk, couleur citron d'or.
"One set silk underclothing to match.