"My, Rosa, you do look fine!" he exclaimed. "Them clothes must have cost something!"
She nodded haughtily—a vision of cheap furs, with a black hat from which flared one great scarlet flower. She carried a bag of some jingling metal in her hand. Her patent shoes squeaked loudly. She displayed at least twelve inches of silk-clad limbs, and she diffused little waves of a perfume carefully selected on account of its far-reaching qualities. The customer, who knew her by sight, gazed after her admiringly.
"That's your cousin Rosa, isn't it?" she asked.
The small boy nodded, withdrawing his eyes from the disappearing figure with reluctance.
"It must be wonderful to earn enough money to dress like that," he observed enviously. "My, did you see those furs! ... The firtht ornament Rosa ever bought from me wath one of these brooches," he went on, reverting to the subject in hand. "Two shillings she paid, my dear, and eighteenpence I'm asking you, jutht because I like to do business when the old man ain't here. Maybe you could pay the extra sixpence next Saturday...."
Rosa swept through the door and descended the two steps into the dingy sitting-room. In a high-backed chair drawn up to the scanty fire, his head a little on one side, sat her grandfather, asleep. She passed on tiptoe through the room, down the narrow passage, and softly turned the handle of the workshop door. The air was vibrating slightly with the monotonous hum of a concealed dynamo. Bending low over the board, with huge magnifying glasses in his eyes, Mr. Levy, with a small, bright instrument in his hand, was absorbed in some delicate process of refashioning a little glittering mass, carefully held between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Some instinct told the girl to keep silence. She watched him breathlessly until the consciousness of her presence reached him through his finer senses. He raised his knife from its task and turned swiftly around, touched a knob with his foot and the dynamo gradually slackened speed and died away.
"You!" he exclaimed, removing the glasses from his eyes.
She saw the stone upon which he had been working transferred swiftly to his pocket. She was immensely curious. Nevertheless, the personal element came first.
"You're a nice man, aren't you, eh?" she demanded, coming slowly towards him. "What about that little dinner we were going to have, eh, and a theatre? You just leave your place without a word of warning. I wonder grandfather took you back again."
"My dear young lady," he began.