“But it’s for you, sir.”
“Impossible. Some mistake. Please don’t bother—just take it away. There’s a good girl.”
Milly’s disdain of this blandishment was plainly visible in the added elevation of her already sufficiently tucked-up nose.
“Beg pardon, sir,” she persisted coldly, “but it’s got your nime on it, and the boy as left it just now asked if you lived here.”
Staff’s frown portrayed indignation, incredulity and impatience.
“Mistake, I tell you. I haven’t been buying any millinery. Absurd!”
“Beg pardon, sir, but you can see as it’s addressed to you.”
It was: the box being held out for examination, Staff saw plainly that it was tagged with a card inscribed in fashionably slapdash feminine handwriting with what was unquestionably the name and local address of Benjamin Staff, Esq.
Because of this, he felt called upon to subject the box to more minute inspection.
It was nothing more nor less than the everyday milliners’ hat-box of commerce: a capacious edifice of stout pasteboard neatly plastered with wall-paper in whose design narrow stripes of white alternated with aggressive stripes of brown, the whole effectively setting off an abundance of purple blossoms counterfeiting no flower known to botanists. And one gibbous side was further decorated with bold black script advertising the establishment of its origin.