“Now, here is something particularly smart. I am sure it would suit you—pure silk; guaranteed—were fifteen-and-six, are eight-and-eleven. Amazing value. But you shall have them for—” he hesitated—“for one-and-ninepence-halfpenny. Indeed, it would afford me the greatest pleasure to give them to you.”
When he said that, the girl behind the counter stared; and I stared, too. Was he mad? Was he seriously proposing to present me—free, gratis, for nothing—with his master’s silk stockings? The man must have been drinking. I froze him.
“Thank you. The articles are not required by myself. And, if you don’t mind, I would rather that this young lady served me.” I turned to the young lady in question, who was wearing a peculiar look. “I want a pair of brown silk stockings, that shade”; and I handed her Lilian’s matching.
While the girl was endeavouring to find what I wanted, that shop-walker continued to pester me. And not only so, but the shop-walker from the opposite counter came and joined his attentions to the other’s, pressing on me the most ridiculous things. When I severely snubbed them both, they began to smile at one another. We were the centre of observation, alike to customers and assistants.
I was delighted to get out of the shop with Lilian’s stockings at last. I made no attempt to get Audrey’s ribbon. And I would have gone straight off home without Doris’s fringe-nets, had I dared; but I did not dare. Morrel’s was close at hand; practically on the way, and if I had returned without them, there would not only have been a tremendous disturbance, but they would probably have sent me back again.
The worst of it was that I disliked Morrel’s. I loathe hairdressers. They always seem to regard women as so many dummies, or, at least, lay-figures, of whom they can make anything they please. I am convinced that they despise us. What else can you expect? Thousands and thousands of us owe all our charms to them. They give countless women their complexions, their eyebrows—indeed, to all intents and purposes, their entire faces. Hundreds of thousands owe all their hair to them. Their little flirty curls, on pins, for all sorts of occasions—Lilian has rows of them, stuck on sheets of cork, like butterflies—their fringes, coils, switches, transformations, their entire wigs, not to speak of the foundations on which they build. Then think of the dyes, restorers, so-called washes, curling fluids, and all that kind of thing. Oh, dear! The girls spend heaps of money at Morrel’s. I believe that mamma would just as soon die as do without such places.
Why I particularly objected to Morrel’s was because there they were always at me to do as the others did; and I know that, in their politely insolent way, they jeered at me because I refused. Mr Morrel himself was a horror—a little, stoutish man, with his scanty, light-brown hair curled in rows. He reeked of perfume. I would far sooner have sat in a third-class smoking-carriage, full of horny-handed sons of toil, all “blowing” shag—I believe that that’s the proper word—than have occupied a chair next to him. And he, in his heart, I knew, despised me; first, for belonging to such a barber’s block family, and then for refusing to allow him to practise any of his arts to supply the charms which I was quite aware that I so plentifully lacked.
When I entered the shop, I found that he was alone in it. I was disgusted. He stood simpering behind his glass cases, twiddling a frightfully blonde curl, to which he was giving some finishing touches on its pin. As a rule, there was a young woman in the shop—with such a head of hair. It was never done twice in the same style; daily visits in search of packets of hairpins would have been as good as a course of hairdressing lessons—not to speak of his wife, who always seemed somewhere about. His special business was to look after the hairdressing rooms.
As he saw it was I, I believe he was going to ring for his assistant. It was beneath his dignity to personally attend on me. But, as he continued to look at me, on a sudden, he changed his mind. I was persuaded that, as it were, a wave of emotion crept over him; all at once he altered so completely. His simper assumed the dimensions of a beam. Putting his fingers to his oily hair, he regarded me in a manner which, whatever he might think to the contrary, far from became him.
“And what may I do for you, Miss O’Brady?”