"Fire away."
"All for your own good. See?... Now I suppose when you want a mash, you don't think of looking outside the shop."
"I never have a mash inside it."
"Is that so?" Mr. Whitehouse seemed astonished. "Why, I thought you smart managers with all those shop girls round you were like so many grand Turks with their serrallyhos."
"Not much. That's against etiquette—and a fool's game into the bargain. You're safe to be pinched—and, second, you get so jolly sick of being mewed up with 'em all day that you never want to speak to 'em out of hours."
"Then how do you get along? The customers?"
"Yes," said Marsden; and he stroked his moustache, and smiled. "Customers are often very kind."
"Not real ladies?"
"We don't ask their pedigrees. Go down St. Saviour's Court any fine evening, and see the domestic servants waiting in their best clothes. It'll remind you of Piccadilly Circus;" and both gentlemen laughed.
"There's a parlourmaid," continued Marsden, "out of Adelaide Crescent—who is simply a little lump of all right. Venetian red hair—a picture."