“The fact is, that I knew he was trying to attract my attention all the time, but I thought that it was only somebody else who wanted to use the telephone in a hurry, and I took my own good time.”
“He might have known you would have done that,” said the girl with the classic profile. “Girls, I often wonder why drug clerks are such gloomy, misanthropic creatures?”
“Dear knows,” said the president; “I’ve often noticed it, though. And how cross a clerk in a shoe store always is! Strange, too, when they have such light, easy work. I tried on seventeen pairs of boots only yesterday, and I never was so tired in all my life; yet I was as amiable as possible, and the clerk, who had nothing to do but wait on me, was so rude that I thought seriously of having the proprietor in to hear of it. However, I compromised by going out without buying anything.”
“It was very good of you, I’m sure,” said the blue-eyed girl. “You know Marie sends to Paris for all her shoes. I never saw such beauties in all my life as she wears.”
“H’m. I know she says so,” returned the girl with the Roman nose, “but—look here, if I tell you something, will you promise never to tell it as long as you live? Well, then, I spent the day with Marie last week. She had a lovely new pair of shoes, and I tried my best, without asking directly, you know, to find the name of the Parisian boot-maker, and how much she paid for them.”
“Of course you didn’t find out,” said the girl with the dimple in her chin. “Marie can be as impervious to a hint as a man.”
“M’hm. Well, she got ready to go out with me, and just as we were ready to start she was called out of the room. Her boots were all in the closet, and I—well, somehow I just happened to be near the door, it was ajar, and I stooped down to look at the maker’s name on them, when—oh, girls, the door behind me suddenly flew open!”
“Oh, my goodness, it was Marie herself! What did—”
“No, it was the maid. She said: ‘Will you please tell Miss Marie, when she comes in, that Cashly has sent up for the pair of boots she didn’t take. The boy is waiting in the hall.’”
“Well, I never,” said the blue-eyed girl. “But I’ve always said that if I sent to Paris for my boots I’d have better looking ones than she gets!”