At the end of two hours Nancy returned, the two clerks and the manager accompanying her. The store people were slightly flushed, Nancy herself sullenly acquiescent. For the first time in her life she had had the opportunity to buy enough clothes of her own, and yet she hadn't been allowed to choose what she really wanted. Gently but inexorably they had rejected the garments Nancy selected, smoothly insisting that these weren't "just the thing" for her. They slid her into quiet-colored, plainly cut things that she wouldn't have looked at if left to her own devices. It took their united tact, firmness, and diplomacy to steer Nancy over the reefs of what the manager called hired-girl taste.
Nancy was silent when she appeared before Mr. Champneys in her new clothes. She thought that if she had been allowed to pick them out for herself, instead of having been hypnotized—"bulldozed" is what she called it—into plain old dowdy duds by two shopwomen and a Jew manager, she'd have given him more for his money.
Mr. Champneys, looking her over critically, admitted that the girl was at least presentable. From hat to shoes she gave the impression of being well and carefully dressed. But her aspect breathed dissatisfaction, her bearing was ungraciousness itself; nor did the two women clerks, trained to patience, tact, and politeness as they were, altogether manage to conceal their unfavorable opinion of her; even the clever, smiling young Jew, used to managing women shoppers, failed to hide the fact that he was more than glad to get this one off his hands.
Nancy hadn't taken time to eat her dinner before leaving the Baxter house, nor had Mr. Champneys had his lunch. They drove to his hotel, both hungry, and had their first meal together. Nancy hadn't been trained to linger over meals: one ate as much as one could get, in as short a space of time as possible. Mr. Champneys was grateful to a merciful Providence that he had ordered that repast served in his private sitting-room.
Her hunger quite satisfied, she shoved her plate aside, sighed, stretched luxuriously, and yawned widely, like the healthy animal she was.
"What we got to do now? Them women at the store said they'd get the rest of my things here, along with the travelin'-bags, in a coupla hours. I got a swell suit-case, didn't I? And oh, them toilet things! But between now and then, what you want I should do?"
It was then half-after four, and the train they were to take didn't leave until half-after seven.
"What would you like to do?" he asked.
"Can I go to the movies?"
He thought it an excellent idea. It would give him some idea of the girl's mental processes; the psychology of the proletariat, he thought, could be studied to advantage in their reaction to the movies.