“No, sir, none,” Joan answered.
“Ah! I see: a lady, I suppose.”
“I am not a lady, sir,” replied Joan.
“Ain’t you?—then you imitate the article very well.”
“Just what I feared,” murmured Mrs. Bird, shaking her head.
“However,” he went on, “we can overlook that fault; but I have another doubt about you. You’re too good-looking. Our customers like to see their things tried on a fine figure, of course, but they don’t like to see them tried on a girl who makes them look common dowds beside her. Why, a three-guinea mantle would seem a better thing on your back than a forty-pound cloak on most of them. You’d show off the goods, I dare say, but I doubt that you would frighten away custom.”
“I thought that tall people were always wanted,” hesitated Joan.
“Tall people!” said Mr. Waters, with an admiring snigger; “just you look at yourself in this pier glass, and I think that you will see something else there beside height. Now, I’ll give you a bit of advice: you drop this show and go on to the stage. You’ll draw there; yes, even if you can’t sing or act a bit, there are hundreds who would pay to come and look at you. By George! I’m not sure that I wouldn’t myself.”
“I do not wish to go on the stage,” answered Joan stiffly; and Mrs. Bird behind her murmured, “No! never!” in sympathetic tones. “If you think that I shall not suit,” she added, “I will not take up your time any longer.”
“I didn’t say that, miss. Here!”—and he put his head out of the door and called to a shop-woman—“just give me that velvet mantle, will you? Now, miss,” he said: “you fancy that Mrs. Bird’s a customer, and let me see you try to sell her this cloak.”