Lady Betty Across the Water

by C. N. Williamson; A. M. Williamson

The petticoats and stockings and belts and lace things and parasols, and especially blouses, were so perfectly thrilling that my heart began to beat quite fast at sight of them. I felt as if I must have some immediately; and when Mrs. Ess Kay said that this was "quite a cheap store," I said to myself that I would do something more interesting than watch her shopping.

She had to buy handkerchiefs to begin with, for most of hers had disappeared in the wash at foreign hotels; and Sally wanted veiling. Those were not interesting to me, because they are necessary; and necessaries, like your daily bread and such things, are so dull. I said that I would just wander about a little, as they thought they would be some time, and we made an appointment to meet in half an hour at what they called the notion counter. I hadn't an idea what it was, and didn't like to ask, because I had asked so many questions already; but I knew that I could get someone to take me there when the half hour was up.

When you want everything you see, but aren't sure which things you want enough to buy and how many you can afford, it's less confusing to prowl alone. Besides, there was an exciting feeling of independence in strolling about unchaperoned in a shop as big as a village, in a strange foreign city.

I really did need a sunshade to go with a blue dress of mine, because my only light one (if I don't count rather a common white thing) is pink. I saw some beauties, and I wanted to ask the price; but the attendants,--who were girls, with lovely figures and their hair done in exactly the same flop over their foreheads,--were so interested in talking about a young man they all knew, that it seemed cruel to interrupt them, especially as I mightn't buy the sunshade in the end. However, I did venture to speak, in quite a humble voice, by and by, but the girl couldn't understand a word until I'd repeated everything twice. "A sunshade? Oh, you mean one of these parasawls," she said then. "Excuse me, it's your English accent I didn't quite catch at first. That one's ten dollars and forty-nine cents, and this is eight dollars, eighty-nine."

While we were busy doing the dollars into pounds and shillings, we got quite friendly, for she was a very obliging girl, and didn't bear me any grudge for interrupting, though her friends were going on with their conversation and telling such exciting things about the young man that she must have been dying to listen.

However, my girl hardly paid any attention to them at all, except just to get mixed up in her answers to me once or twice. She said it was very difficult to understand English people on account of their not opening their mouths much when they spoke, and their accent being so strong. I found this odd, because we always feel as if, the English language having been started by us, it is Americans who have an accent; but it seems that a great many people in the States dislike the way we talk, very much, and consider it extremely affected.

After all the trouble she had taken, I felt dreadfully not to buy anything of her, but the sunshades were too expensive, though she said they were marked down. I took a Japanese fan instead, which pops out at you like a Jack-in-the-box, from a fat red stick; and even that was a dollar and twenty-five cents when I thought it would be sixpence. On the way to meet Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally at the notion counter, I enquired the price of a good many other superlatively beautiful things, but they were all superlatively high, as well; and by the time a very dashing young man, who said he was a "floor-walker," had steered me to the notions, I felt as if I were the only cheap thing in the whole shop. To be sure, there were some embroidered collars and American flag-headed hat-pins, and flowered muslin wrappers which I could have had without ruining myself, if I had wanted them. But I didn't; and what I should like to know is, what does a girl do, if she's poor and has to live in New York? Mrs. Ess Kay had said the shop was a cheap shop, so there must be others where even the flowered wrappers and collars and hatpins are more. And besides, a girl couldn't go through life dressed entirely in such things. However, judging from the girls I have seen so far, they are all very rich, except the lower classes; and of course, it's much simpler to do without things if you can just be poor and give up to it comfortably, without thinking of appearances, like us.

As soon as I saw the Notion Counter, I knew why they had named it that; only it would be still more expressive if it were called the Imagination counter. It was lovely, and looked like thousands of little Christmas presents spread out for everyone.

There were a great many pretty people buying things at it, and in most of the other departments where I went with Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally; but when I admired them, and the sweet blouses they wore, and the way they carried their shoulders and hips, Mrs. Ess Kay sniffed, and said there was nobody in New York, now,--nobody at all who was worth looking at, and wouldn't be till October, except those who were just in the city for a day or two of shopping, like us. When I suggested that these charming beings in white muslins and summer silks might be here in that way, she did not think it at all probable.

"How can you tell?" I asked. "They look just as nice as we do."