"I did not inquire how you ran your business, but what kind of business you ran," she retorted icily. "Of course,—we shall pay as we purchase."
I was hastening from bad to worse. I could have bitten my tongue out or kicked myself. With a tremendous effort, I pulled myself together and assumed as much dignity as was possible in my badly ruffled internal and external condition.
"Are there any men about the place?" she asked, changing the subject with disconcerting suddenness.
I flushed slightly at the taunt.
"N-no! miss," I replied, in my best shop-keeper tone, "sorry,—but we are completely out of them."
She must have detected the flavour of sarcasm, for her lips relaxed for the briefest moment, and a smile was born which showed two rows of even white teeth. I ventured a smile in return, but it proved a sorry and an unfortunate one, for it killed hers ruthlessly and right at the second of its birth, too.
I almost waited for her to tell me I was "too fresh," but she did not do so. She had a more telling way. She simply wilted me with a silent reserve that there was no combating.
Only on one or two occasions had I encountered that particular shade of reserve that adjusts everything around to its proper sphere and level without hurting, and it was always in elderly, aristocratic, British Duchesses; never in a young lady with golden hair and eyes,—well! at that time, I could not tell the colour of her eyes, but there was something in them that completed a combination that I seemed to have been hunting for all my life and had never been able to find.
"Mr. Store-keeper," she commenced again.
I felt like tearing my hair and crying aloud. "Mr. Store-keeper," forsooth.