"May I take your hat?" said Edith, approaching him, of course expecting to receive that piece of fine head covering to deposit it where it belonged at such a time.
"No, madam, no; it is just as well where it is," he replied, showing his white teeth through a crooked smile. "I've been used to setting with it on."
He was so unapproachable that Edith was embarrassed before him. Star had remembered him as the former disheartening clerk of her step-father. She had seen him when she had gone to the junk shop with her mother that time for the redemption of her kitchen utensils, and she had not forgotten how cadaverous and impoverished he then looked.
"I presume you remember me?" asked Star, to break the monotonous silence into which the interview had perforce fallen.
"I don't know that I do," said he, showing his fine teeth again, and lifting his eyebrows. "So many people came into the store in those days that I paid little attention to them all."
"Don't you remember the girl who was so poorly clad that was with her mother the day Mr. Dieman gave back the dishes her father had pawned, and against which you protested?" asked Star.
"Are you the gal?" he asked, with brightening face.
"I am the gal," returned Star, laughing.
"Well! how time makes changes in this world," he responded, looking her over carefully, hardly believing that the pretty face of Star's, with pretty gown to match, could possibly be the same. "It beats all; and you are the sister of all of Mr. Dieman's children?"
"Mrs. Dieman's children," she corrected.