“Waiter! Joe! Joe!” cried the landlady, “why don’t you carry in the sweetmeat-puffs and the tarts here to the company in the best parlour?”
“Coming, ma’am,” answered the waiter; and with a large dish of tarts and puffs, the waiter came from the bar; the landlady threw open the door of the best parlour, to let him in; and the basket-woman had now a full view of a large cheerful company, and amongst them several children, sitting round a supper-table.
“Ay,” whispered the landlady, as the door closed after the waiter and the tarts, “there are customers enough, I warrant, for you in that room, if you had but the luck to be called in. Pray, what would you have the conscience, I wonder now, to charge me for these here half-dozen little mats to put under my dishes?”
“A trifle, ma’am,” said the basket-woman. She let the landlady have the mats cheap, and the landlady then declared she would step in and see if the company in the best parlour had done supper. “When they come to their wine,” added she, “I’ll speak a good word for you, and get you called in afore the children are sent to bed.”
The landlady, after the usual speech of, “I hope the supper and everything is to your liking, ladies and gentlemen,” began with, “If any of the young gentlemen or ladies would have a cur’osity to see any of our famous Dunstable straw-work, there’s a decent body without would, I daresay, be proud to show them her pincushion-boxes, and her baskets and slippers, and her other cur’osities.”
The eyes of the children all turned towards their mother; their mother smiled, and immediately their father called in the basket-woman, and desired her to produce her curiosities. The children gathered round her large pannier as it opened, but they did not touch any of her things.
“Ah, papa!” cried a little rosy girl, “here are a pair of straw slippers that would just fit you, I think; but would not straw shoes wear out very soon? and would not they let in the wet?”
“Yes, my dear,” said her father, “but these slippers are meant—”
“For powdering-slippers, miss,” interrupted the basket-woman.
“To wear when people are powdering their hair,” continued the gentleman, “that they may not spoil their other shoes.”