As I might have expected, that baker’s boy was still there. He had hardly had time to take himself off with his barrow. But that was no reason why he should plant himself right in the centre of the pavement, and address me, the moment I appeared, as if I had been an equal, with mamma looking down at us from the open door.
“Excuse me, miss, if I seem to take a liberty, but might I ask you if you was fond of chocolate creams?”
I held my head a trifle higher than I might have done if mamma had not been up there, because I am fond of chocolate creams, though what business it was of his I cannot think—and I annihilated him finally:
“If you attempt to speak to me again I shall report you to your master, and you will find yourself without a situation.”
I marched off and left him standing in a preposterous and most unseemly attitude—his great basket at his side—as if glued to the paving-stones. And I heard him mutter:
“Cruel as the grave—and cold.”
That ridiculous, insolent boy—he was nothing else—positively heaved a sigh which followed me like a gust of wind, with mamma still at the top of the front-door steps.
CHAPTER V.
THE FURTHER EPISODES OF THE SHOP-WALKER AND THE ARTIST IN HAIR
As I marched along—remembering mamma’s instructions to be as quick as I “decently” could, without, however, laying too much stress upon the “decently”—I became aware of something unusual—people were staring, especially male people.
Now I have been stared at in the street, but I do not remember that it was ever in what you could exactly call a flattering way.