Mr. De Grey has spent a small fortune in pincushions, kettle-holders, dressed dolls, and many other such-like articles which no young man of fashion should be without.
"What have I done to be so neglected, Miss Craven?" asks Gerard, elevating his eyebrows plaintively. "Am I expected to put on these slippers on the spot, that I am given no paper to pack them up in?"
"Oh! I beg your pardon; I thought that Miss De Grey was attending to you," answers Esther, in the most business-like, shop-woman voice, without smiling, or lifting her eyes.
"I thought no one ever gave change at a bazaar," he says, trying to make her look up at him, as she puts a few shillings into his hand.
"I do not approve of such extortion," she answers, demurely; "honesty is the best policy."
"That proverb must have been invented, as Whately justly observed, by some one who had tried the other alternative."
She smiles a little against her will. "I wish you two would go now," she says, addressing both young men indifferently: "you are only making me idle. Look! there are three old maids ready to storm the position, and only deterred by you."
"Rhadamantha, Hebe, and Niobe!" says St. John, laughing.
"Please go; I know you are not thinking of buying anything more."
"Don Ferdinando can do no more than he can do, and at present he is pretty well cleaned out."