"It was clean sugar," Polly ran on, feeling quite sure if she stopped talking, that all hope was lost.
"But they are mussed," began the lady by the door, very decidedly.
Alexia was huddling up her bundle quite gone in despair, and lost to all the distress of having no candy to take to the Cooking Club supper. If those two ladies would only buy the centerpieces they had selected, it was all she hoped for in this world.
"No, indeed! Come, Sister!" and she opened the door. "Why, Mrs. Alexander!"
Mrs. Alexander, a portly person, with a great deal of black jet and lace, that seemed to be always catching in the apparel of those who passed her, worked her way into the small shop, and up past the knot of people, giving friendly nods of recognition on her way.
"How d'ye do, Miss Ellicott, Miss Juliana. How are you, Polly? And, Alexia, how is your aunt?" And without waiting for a reply, she sprang, if such a ponderous body could be said to spring, at the box of centerpieces Miss Angell was packing away. "Oh, oh! how beautiful! Stop"—laying her large hand on one. "Just what I want. How much is it?"
"Fifteen dollars," said Miss Angell, whipping it neatly out of the box, her dismal frown becoming an expansive smile. "Yes, it is a beauty—one of the very latest things," and she spread it forth on the lounge with an experienced little nourish.
Miss Ellicott deserted the door and hurried over to the lounge. "I'll—I'll"—as she tried to work herself in between. But the portly Mrs. Alexander had no idea of being interrupted at such an important crisis in life when centerpieces were to be decided upon, so she loudly kept on in her bargaining. "I'll take it," she said, in her most decided fashion. "And the next one, too, I fancy; let me see that."
"But that is," gasped Miss Juliana, threading her way into the group, "the very one that I liked."
"Eh?" said Mrs. Alexander, looking up with the acute eyes of a bargain-hunter. "Oh, I don't wonder you like it; it's a beauty. Yes, I'll take it also. How much did you say it was, Miss Angell?"