“But I don’t understand. Every one has a right to come here. I can’t have any of my customers put out for royalty. I am not being honored by a call. This is a shop —”
“Oh, yes, my lady, but you don’t understand. You’ve never had this sort —”
“What sort?”
The woman’s voice quavered and broke. “Tarts, my lady. Regular Piccadilly trotters, that’s what!”
Ishbel was as dismayed as the woman could wish. Followed by her equally horrified friend she brushed the forewoman aside, ran up the stair, and entered the show-room. The large windows, open to the gay subdued roar of Bond Street, let in a flood of mellow sunshine. The square room, not too large, and with a mere suggestion of the First Empire in its wall paper and scant furniture, was a severe yet delicate background for the most charming hats ever seen in London. Of every shape and size, but each touched with a fairy’s wand, these harbingers of autumn, hopefully prismatic, and mounted on slender rods, seemed to sing that woman’s face was naught without its frame, and that in them alone was the problem of the floating decoration solved.
But alas! no such fantasie was in the air this morning. “Creatures,” in truth! Two females, loudly dyed, rouged, blackened, bedecked in cheap finery, were overhauling hats, mantles, and chiffons, despite the protests of the livid assistant. Ishbel went directly up to the largest and most aggressive.
“I am so sorry,” she said with her sweet remote smile and her bright crisp manner, “but I must ask you to go. Some other time I shall be most happy to show you the things, but just now everything must be put in order as quickly as possible. I am expecting patrons who are in town only for the moment. As you see, this room is not very large. Be quick, Jeannie, will you?”
She turned her back on the two women, but the largest walked deliberately round in front of her.
“I say,” she said, “are you the boss?”
“I am—Jeannie—”