[MILDRED'S BARGAIN.]
A Story for Girls.
BY MRS. JOHN LILLIE.
Chapter I.
"Six o'clock! Thank fortune!" exclaimed one of a group of girls in Mr. Hardman's store.
Mildred Lee glanced up with a sigh of relief, moving with quicker fingers at the thought of being so near the end of her day's work. She was a pale pretty girl about sixteen, with soft brown hair, dark eyes, and a something more refined in her air and manner than her associates. Perhaps it was that in her dress there were none of the flimsy attempts at finery which the other girls affected so strongly, or perhaps it was only her quiet, lady-like self-possession which had in it nothing of vulgar reticence or pride; but, in any case, there was a touch of something superior to all lowering influences, and the most flippant sales-woman in "Hardman's" lowered her tone of coarse good-humor, stopped short in any gay recital, when Mildred's pretty face and quiet little figure came in view.
"Six o'clock," said Jenny Martin, a tall, "striking-looking" young person, who was helping Milly to put away some ribbons. "Oh dear, now we'll be kept! There comes that lady from Lane Street. She'll stay half an hour."
"Young ladies, what are you about?" exclaimed the voice of Mr. Hardman's son and heir, a short, stout young man, very much overdressed, and who bustled up to the counter, dispersing the little group with various half-audible exclamations. Then he turned, bowing and smiling, to the late customer.
She was a plain, elderly woman, dressed in a quaint fashion, but bearing unmistakable signs of good-breeding; evidently what even Mr. Tom Hardman would recognize as a "real lady." Miss Jenner, of Milltown, was regarded by the store-keepers in her vicinity as a valuable customer. She was known to be very rich, although eccentric, and her great red brick house, a little back from the street, with its box-walked garden and tall old trees, was one of the finest and most respectable in the county. Miss Jenner had been two years abroad, and this was one of her first visits to any Milltown store. She received Mr. Tom's servile courtesies with rather an indifferent manner, glancing around the big, showy store, scanning the faces of the tired young attendants, as she said, "Is not Mildred Lee one of your sales-women?"