"Dull!" said Fanny: "I never knew anything like it. I don't mean written orders from the country, of course; but we only had one customer in our place the whole of last week."
"What will you bet me, Fanny," said Bella Merton, "that I don't tell you that customer's name?"
"Why, how can you possibly know it? She----"
"I don't speak of a she! I mean a he," said Bella, laughing.
"Hes ain't milliners' customers," said Mr. Burgess, with a titter.
"Ain't they?" said John Merton, with a savage expression on his good-looking face; "but they are sometimes, worse luck!"
"My customer, at all events, was a lady," said Fanny, rather disapproving of this turn of the conversation.
"Yes; but she was accompanied by a gentleman," said Bella, still laughing; "and, as John says, gentlemen have no right in milliners' showrooms."
"I suppose that even Mr. John Merton would not object to a father's accompanying his daughter to a milliner's showroom?" said Fanny, beginning to be piqued.
"Mr. John Merton merely spoke generally, Miss Stafford," said John, with a bow. "He would not have taken the liberty to apply his observation to any particular case."