It is all over in a few seconds’ time; and with equal celerity Mary Morgan, slipping the purchased commodity into her cloak, glides out of the room—vision-like as she entered it.
“Who is that young lady?” asks one of the champagne drinkers, interrogating the barmaid.
“Young lady!” tartly returns the latter, with a flourish of her heavily chignoned head, “only a farmer’s daughter.”
“Aw!” exclaims the second tippler, in drawling imitation of Swelldom, “only the offspring of a chaw-bacon! she’s a monstrously crummy creetya, anyhow.”
“Devilish nice gal!” affirms the other, no longer addressing himself to the barmaid, who has scornfully shown them the back of her head, with its tower of twisted jute. “Devilish nice gal, indeed! Never saw spicier stand before a counter. What a dainty little fish for a farmer’s daughter! Say, Charley! wouldn’t you like to be sellin’ her a pair of kids—Jouvin’s best—helpin’ her draw them on, eh?”
“By Jove, yes! That would I.”
“Perhaps you’d prefer it being boots? What a stepper she is, too! S’pose we slide after, and see where she hangs out?”
“Capital idea! Suppose we do?”
“All right, old fellow! I’m ready with the yard stick—roll off!”
And without further exchange of their professional phraseology, they rush out, leaving their glasses half full of the effervescing beverage—rapidly on the spoil.