Petro's ideas for a "Start in Life Fund" were occupying a great deal of his attention and were crystallizing into concrete form. He hoped that he might soon cease to be a drone, and end by being of some real use in the world. But as Peter junior passed out of the shop, his promise to keep "hands off the Hands" seemed one of the things to regret, whether selfishly or otherwise. He would have liked to know more of the place, so passionately interesting to him, apart from its business side; and he was unable to understand how Raygan, the one whose curiosity had drawn all four to the Hands that day, could have managed to be bored.
"Blouses" pulsed with excitement. Miss Ena Rolls and her brother were said to be "showing their father's
shop to an English lord." How the thrilling tale began to go the rounds nobody in "Blouses" could tell. But whenever any famous personage—a millionaire's daughter or an actress, a society beauty or the heroine of a fashionable scandal—enters a big department store, the news of her advent runs from counter to counter like wildfire. In some shops the appearance of an Astor, a Vanderbilt, or a Princess Patricia would send up the mercury of excitement forty degrees higher than that of a Miss or Mr. Rolls. But at the Hands, Peter the Great's son and daughter would have drawn all eyes from the reigning Czar and Czarina of Russia.
It was rumoured that they had lunched early in the Pompeian restaurant. The waitress who had served them had not known until too late. She would regret this all her life. Mr. Michaels, of "Jewellery," who had been honoured by showing them pearls, was envied by all his fellows, and the same with Miss Dick, of "Candy," and Miss Wallace, in "Perfume." Girls in all departments grew quite jumpy in expectation that the party might appear, and under the intense nervous strain of trying to recognize them in time.
"Rubberneck!" one hissed to another, and giggled if she made her start.
Even Miss Stein, now somewhat resigned to fate and looking more kindly at Fred Thorpe, became condescending and communicative in the general flurry.
"Keep your eyes peeled for a good-looking, short guyl in blue velvet, with an ermine muff and stole that's a beaut from Beautville," she said to Win. "Thorpe saw her. He's had her pointed out to him at the theayter,
so he knows. Her brother's dark and thin, but blue eyed. I saw in the Sunday supplement he's goin' to marry the sister of that lord."
There was a dinner at Sea Gull Manor that night in honour of the Rolls's guests, and just as Eileen had finished dressing, her brother Raygan knocked at her door.