Chapter XXII
It was a week to a day after the wedding, and Anderson had been to the office for the morning mail, and was just returning to the store when a watching face at a window of Madame Griggs's dress-making establishment opposite suddenly disappeared, and when Anderson was mounting the steps of the store piazza he heard a panting breath and rattle of starched petticoats, and turned to see the dress-maker.
“Good-morning,” she gasped.
“Good-morning, Mrs. Griggs,” returned Anderson.
“Can I see you jest a minute on business? I have been watching for you to come back from the office. I want to buy a melon, if it ain't too dear, before I go, but I want to see you jest a minute in the office first, if you ain't too busy.”
“Certainly. Come right in,” responded Anderson; but his heart sank, for he divined her errand.
The dress-maker followed him into the office with a nervous teeter and a loud rattle of starched cottons. That morning she was clad in blue gingham trimmed profusely with white lace, and her face looked infinitesimal and meagre in the midst of her puffs of blond frizzes.
“I should think that woman was dressed in paper bags by the noise she makes,” Sam Riggs remarked to the old clerk when the office door had closed behind her.
“I should think it would kinder take her mind off things she starts out to do,” remarked Price. The rattle of the oscillating petticoats had distracted his own mind from a nice calculation as to the amount of a bill for a fractional amount of citron at a fractional increase in the market-price. The old clerk was about to send a cost slip with some goods to be delivered to a cash customer.
“Yep,” responded Sam Riggs. “I should think she'd git rattled with sech a rattlin' of her petticoats.” The boy regarded this as so supernaturally smart that he actually blushed with modest appreciation of his own wit, and tears sprang to his eyes when he laughed. But when he glanced at his fellow-clerk, Price was calculating the cost of the citron, and did not seem to have noticed anything unusual in the speech. Riggs, who was easily taken down, felt immediately humiliated, and doubtful of his own humor, and changed the subject. “Say,” he whispered, jerking his index-finger towards the office door, “you don't suppose she is settin' her cap at the boss, do you?”