“Please, no. Not that,” I heard myself say quickly.
My employer turned upon me a face with some of the imperturbability quite jerked out of it by surprise.
“What’s that?”
“If you don’t mind, I can’t—I would rather not do so as you suggest about that,” said I, holding my head very high, but feeling myself turn as crimson as the flowers in my coat, and speaking rather shakily, for this was the first time I had ever asserted my own feelings in even the mildest way before him. “I—I know it seems like straining at a gnat after all the camels that I am preparing to swallow. Of course I will get the frocks and things. Only—please, you must allow me to pay for them out of my allowance—my salary.”
He looked at me doubtfully.
“That seems scarcely fair—to you. It means paying out your own money on things, that—well! I thought that would obviously come out as ‘business expenses.’”
I said, feeling miserably uncomfortable, “Don’t you see that I can’t possibly allow you to pay for—to give me frocks?”
“But—don’t you understand that—in the way of business, you will have to allow me to give you other things?”
“Other things? What?”
“Why, presents. I don’t know what, exactly. You will probably have to come round the shops with me yourself, and tell me. You are the best judge of what a girl would like to show, as gifts, keepsakes, what-nots, from the man to whom she is, presumably, engaged. It is part of this affair!” explained Mr. Waters, a little impatiently, as the taxi was held up at a crossing and waited panting for the signal to get on. “It would ‘look odd,’ as you yourself expressed it once, if I did not offer you presents.”