Something in the man’s tone told the astute lady that he was weakening, that he needed the money, that the chickens were hers. She pushed a dollar and a quarter into his hand, seized her purchase, and disappeared round the corner, into a waiting limousine.
A little later that same morning, Marjorie, finding that the children were all right in the care of Mrs. Plum, who “charred” her on Saturdays, went down town to The Ancient Chattellarium. Her errand was simple. She wished to have a piece of furniture repaired. It had been broken in the moving, and one of her callers had given her this address.
The Chattellarium could not, even by the most vulgar, be called a shop. It was an opulent apartment where elegant furniture was displayed—and sold—at dignified prices. Marjorie Dilling paused uncertainly on the threshold, feeling that she must, through error, have strayed into someone’s residence.
But she hadn’t! A lady glanced over the rim of a lampshade she was making, and invited her to enter.
“Just looking around?” she asked, with the instinct of one who recognises the difference between a shopper and a buyer. “I’ve got some rather nice things just unpacked,” and she went on sticking pins into the dull-rose silk with which she was covering a huge wire frame.
“Thank you, very much,” answered Marjorie, stealing a timid glance over her shoulder, “but I haven’t a great deal of time, and I really came to see—if—if—to ask about getting a piece of furniture repaired. I was told that I might have it done, here.”
The young lady took several pins from her mouth and looked up. She was quite pretty and had a pleasant manner in spite of her way of addressing most people as though they were her inferiors, and a few very prominent people as though they were her equals. She talked incessantly, and it had become her custom to illumine her speech with Glittering Personalities.
She discovered Marjorie’s name and that her husband was a recently-elected Back Bencher from an obscure little Western town, as well as the nature of the repairs required, so cleverly, that she seemed to be answering questions instead of asking them, and she was ever so kind in promising to help.
“Of course, I don’t do this sort of thing as a rule,” she explained, “I simply couldn’t! My men are dreadfully overworked as it is, and we are three months behind in our orders. But because I have just recently repaired a dressing-table for Government House, and repolished a china cabinet for Lady Elton, at Rockcliffe, I haven’t the conscience to refuse you.”