"Yes, Sir?" said the voice once more. There was a note of weariness in it now, a far-off hint of unshed tears.
Suddenly my eye caught a label on a bale. I decided to plunge.
"A yard of cream wincey," I said firmly.
The ice was broken. She smiled; her sisters in the background smiled; and I sank relieved upon the nearest chair. Obviously I had picked a winner; it seemed that cream wincey was a thing no man need blush to buy. I watched her fold up the material and enclose it in brown paper, and resolved to send it to my married sister at Ealing. And then a terrible thing happened. As I rose to take my parcel I saw Jones standing just outside on the pavement, talking earnestly to the Vicar. I sat down again.
"And the next thing?" murmured the voice seductively.
I looked at her in despair. But even as I did so my second inspiration came. "A yard of cream wincey," I said.
One fleeting, startled, curious glance she gave me; then without a word she proceeded to comply with my request. I waited, with one eye on her deftly-moving fingers, the other on Jones and the Vicar. And, as I waited, I resolved, come what might, to see the thing through.
She finished all too soon, handed me my second parcel and repeated her question. I repeated my order.
I have never spoken to anyone of what I went through during the next three-quarters of an hour. My own recollection of it is very vague. Through a sort of mist I see a figure in a chair facing a damsel who cuts off and packs up endless yards of cream wincey till there rises between them on the counter a stockade of brown-paper parcels. I see the other young female haberdashers, her companions, gathering timidly round, an awed joy upon their faces. Finally I see the figure rise and stumble blindly into the street beneath an immense burden of small packages all identical in size and shape. I can remember no more.
On the following day I went down to Devonshire for a rest, and stayed there till my system was clear of cream wincey. The first man I met on my return was Peters.