“I think you will like these better, Moddom,” the voice of the saleswoman cut into Dorothy’s agitated thinking.
She hesitated, and was lost. She could not make a disturbance by telling what she had seen—she simply could not.
All the time she was choosing her frock she felt like a thief herself. Half her pleasure in her purchase vanished, and she was chilled as if the sun had gone behind a cloud, leaving the day drear and cold.
In spite of this the garment was as satisfactory as it could be, and the price was so reasonable that there was a margin left over for shoes and stockings to wear with the frock. Oh, life was not such a tragedy after all, and Dorothy hugged her parcel with joy as she went down in the lift to join Tom, who was still absorbed by the window filled with football things.
“Did you buy up the shop?” he asked, as they went off briskly in search of lunch.
“Why, no; it would have needed a pretty long purse to do that,” she said with a laugh; and then she burst into the story of the shoplifting she had seen, asking Tom what he would have done if he had been in her place.
“Yelled out, ‘Stop thief!’ and have been pretty quick about it too,” he answered with decision, as they settled down at a corner table in a quiet little restaurant for lunch.
“Oh, I could not!” There was real distress in Dorothy’s tone. “The girl was so nice to look at, and she was well-dressed too. Oh, Tom, how could she have stooped to such meanness?”
“Women are mostly like that.” Tom wagged his head with a superior air as he spoke. “It is very few women who have any sense of honour; I should say it is peculiar to the sex. When boys and girls have games together the girls always cheat, and expect the boys to sit down under it. It is the same in the mixed schools; the girls expect to get by thieving what the boys have to work hard for. When they are older, and ought to know better, it is still the same; they expect to have what they want, and if they can’t get it by fair means, why, they get it by foul. They don’t care so long as they get it.”
Dorothy stared at him for a moment as if amazed at his outburst; then she laughed merrily, and told him he was a miserable old cynic, who ought to be shut up in a home for men only, and be compelled to cook his own food and darn his own socks to the end of the chapter.