Chance favoured Emily, for that evening as she was starting forth with a load of bright-coloured bandboxes, she encountered her youthful neighbour. The girl was mounting the stairs languidly. The warm weather had sapped her vitality, already undermined by the air of the city. Emily nodded cheerily, and purposely let fall one of the boxes. Rachel turned.
"Here, I'll pick it up for you," she cried; then, after a moment, "Won't you let me help you with them? I can do it as well as not."
Together they emerged into the lighted street.
Though she looked about her with a kind of wistful wonderment, the sordidness of the scenes through which they passed, did not seem really to touch Rachel. Emily kept glancing at her and marked how her childish passionateness was mingled with a suggestive reticence. It was clear that some saddening experience had already come to her. "Poor lamb!" muttered Emily. When a man with a lurching gait passed too close to Rachel, Emily nudged him savagely with the boxes; and when they turned into Division Street, not one of the crew of strident women who solicit trade for the shops, dared to accost her young charge. Not a few of these poor creatures, recognizing Emily, ceased long enough in their chant of "Nice hats! pretty hats!" to give the popular trimmer "good-evening."
Joseph Stedenthal's "Emporium" boasted a millinery department, of which his wife had charge, and a general merchandise and furniture department over which he himself presided. Everything the push-carts furnished, he furnished a little cheaper—at least a penny cheaper; and this stock, as proclaimed by his advertisement, was "displayed to invite the refined mind."
Joseph Stedenthal, staunchly backed by his wife and daughter, expressed a profound scorn for the push-carts and for all who bought and sold therefrom, and never in the bosom of his family was it hinted that he himself, in a not too remote past, had prospered finely as the owner of a cart. Now he had a dignified air of superiority, and only women who did not go bare-headed, came to his shop, women who made some pretence to style. His was the "exclusive" shop of the street.
Mrs. Stedenthal was in her husband's part of the shop when Emily and Rachel entered the "millinery section." Emily seated herself on a high stool and motioned Rachel to do the same. Joseph Stedenthal's voice came to them from a distance. He was thundering with wrath.
"Shame upon you, talking mit the salesmen! Go you up-stairs, I tell you!"
A young girl with flaming cheeks flashed by the door and ascended the stairs.
"I ain't talking to him. I just asked him how much he sold it for," she screamed back.