In the midst of all this Lucile came upon a fidgeting customer whose fingers were constantly plaiting stray locks of hair and whose lips were saying: “I must make a train. I really must. Do you think you could get them to hurry. Do you? Do you really? That would be so nice of you!”
After hurrying the sale through and getting many a sharp look for stepping in ahead of her turn, Lucile had the pleasure of seeing the customer meet a friend an aisle over and pause for a prolonged spell of gossip.
“Who could believe that they could be such children?” she murmured. “No, we haven’t the Broncho Buster Boys,” she turned to answer a query. “That’s a fifty-cent series which we do not carry.” The person who asked the question was a rather pompous lady in kid gloves.
“Have you the Broncho Buster Boys?”
She caught the words spoken behind her back. The customer, ignoring her decided negative, had deliberately turned about and asked the same question of a girl who had come on the floor that morning and knew nothing about the stock.
“I told her,” Lucile said in as steady a tone as she could command, “that we do not carry them.”
Instantly the customer flew into a towering rage. Her words, though quite proper on the lips of a society lady, were the sort that cut to the very soul.
A sharp retort came to Lucile’s lips and she said it.
She was in the midst of it when a hand touched her shoulder and a steady voice said:
“Here! Here! What’s this?”