"Handkerchiefs?"
Another shake.
"Stockings?"
Another shake, accompanied by a deepening of complexion.
"Well—ribbon?"
"Aye, that's it," replied Robert, suddenly finding his voice (which, by the way, rather resembled the Last Trump). "Hauf a yaird—one inch wide—satin—cream!" he roared mechanically.
He received the small parcel, and furtively fingering the money in his pocket, asked the price.
"Two-three, please," replied the damsel briskly.
How Robert thanked his stars that he had some cash in hand! But what a price! All that for a scrap of ribbon! It seemed sinful; but he laid two shillings and threepence on the counter. Greatly to his alarm, the young woman behind it, who up to this point had kept her feelings under commendable control, suddenly collapsed like a punctured balloon on to the shoulder of her nearest neighbour—there being no shop-walkers about—and expressed a wish that she might be taken home and buried. Finally she recovered sufficiently to push Robert's two shillings back across the counter and to place his threepence in a mysterious receptacle which she thrust into a hole in the wall, from which it was ejected with much clatter a minute later; and on being opened proved to contain what the dazed Robert at first took for a half-sovereign, but which he ultimately discovered, when he had abandoned the still giggling maiden and groped his way out into the street, to be a bright new farthing.
The same day he returned to his home; but he did not reach it without one more adventure, a slight one, it is true, but not without its effect upon his future.