There can be no doubt that my person is a striking one, after a fashion; but it is not precisely in the fashion. I am an extra large size all over. My legs are prodigious. I stride along in a style which some persons have said reminds them of the gentleman with the seven-league boots. Mr Morgan was once rude enough to tell me that it always seemed to him that it was the chief ambition of my life to cross Regent Street in a step and a-half. When I am walking with the others I suffer agonies, and I am thankful to think that they are not altogether comfortable. They take about three steps to the yard—the kind of shoes they wear won’t permit of anything else. And at such a pace! I cannot keep up with them; and it is some satisfaction to know they cannot keep up with me. We jangle and wrangle all the time, until at last I go off by myself; and then we are happy. At least, I know I am.
This peculiarity of mine—because, I suppose, it is a peculiarity—has more than once been commented on by perfect strangers. I once heard one street boy remark to another, just as I was passing:
“What yer, Bill! ’ere comes the lady grenadier! Can’t she move ’em!—and ain’t she got ’em to move!”
Another time a dreadful creature asked of a companion:
“I wonder if that young lady’s got stilts underneath her clothes? They can’t be all her own.”
That was the sort of staring I had been used to. But this was different. Men of all sorts, of all ages, turned and looked at me. When their eyes reached my face, there was something in them which I did not altogether like. It gave me a curious sensation. I have seen men stare at the others with something like that look in their eyes. I wondered if they liked it. I was not by any means sure I did. Anyhow, I was not accustomed to that kind of thing. I wondered what they meant by it.
It was not any better when I reached the draper’s. The shop-walker opened the door for me—with such a smile. He was one of those pretty fellows, with moustache turned up at the ends, who really are most trying. His smile seemed to be a fixture. It kept growing larger and larger, and, I presume, sweeter. I hate your pretty fellows. I should like my man to be almost ugly; indeed, I should not mind if he was quite. I spoke to him in the most snubby fashion I could command, perceiving that this was another case in which snubbing might be required. There seemed to be something in the air that afternoon which made men behave in a most unusual manner.
“I want to see some lady’s hose!”
“For yourself?”
There was something in the way he put the question for which I really could have hit him. What did it matter to him who they were for? He led me to a counter behind which there was the usual girl, and on which there was a box full of silk things—such colours! He began to spread them out in front of me, with a smile for which I would have liked to stick a pin into him.