“I expect I shall ’ave to pop over to Paris for it in the end.”
“Oh, I think we can give you satisfaction, Miss Antonia. What you can get in Paris you can get here.”
When she had swept out of the department Mr. Sampson, a little worried, discussed the matter with Mrs. Hodges.
“She’s a caution and no mistake,” said Mrs. Hodges.
“Alice, where art thou?” remarked the buyer, irritably, and thought he had scored a point against her.
His ideas of music-hall costumes had never gone beyond short skirts, a swirl of lace, and glittering sequins; but Miss Antonia had expressed herself on that subject in no uncertain terms.
“Oh, my aunt!” she said.
And the invocation was uttered in such a tone as to indicate a rooted antipathy to anything so commonplace, even if she had not added that sequins gave her the sick. Mr. Sampson ‘got out’ one or two ideas, but Mrs. Hodges told him frankly she did not think they would do. It was she who gave Philip the suggestion:
“Can you draw, Phil? Why don’t you try your ‘and and see what you can do?”
Philip bought a cheap box of water colours, and in the evening while Bell, the noisy lad of sixteen, whistling three notes, busied himself with his stamps, he made one or two sketches. He remembered some of the costumes he had seen in Paris, and he adapted one of them, getting his effect from a combination of violent, unusual colours. The result amused him and next morning he showed it to Mrs. Hodges. She was somewhat astonished, but took it at once to the buyer.