“You should use just the opposite word,” she commented complacently. “I just sat there and counted the men who ogled me and the ones who sat down and tried to talk.”
“Goodness!” said he.
“Opposite again,” she corrected. “They were just imps. Well, they didn’t waste much time on me, I tell you! Superior disdain, that’s the trick.”
The professor was flabbergasted. He told her so, and tried to make clear the risks she was running.
She laughed at him. “Now don’t be preachy, Allen Blynn; I’m in Boston to get ideas from the Jewelers’ Exposition—that, among other things. I’m a business woman, you know. It’s a new species; get used to it.”
The Jewelers’ Exposition was a discovery of the day before. It would not do to be too abrupt with Allen Blynn.
By the time he had gone with her to the Exposition and had heard her wise talk to the exhibitors, he was almost used to it; and by the time he had watched her taking notes and making sketches, he was quite reconciled. Then they just prowled.
“Let’s go window-cracking?” she suggested.
“Not for a minute!” he pretended alarm.
“Don’t you know ‘window-cracking’?” she looked incredulously. “Where is your knowledge of English? That’s my private word for looking in every window along one street and picking out the things you would buy, and not buying a thing. It’s great fun, and awfully cheap.”