"No; I always borrow an old one."
"But if you had to buy a new one, wouldn't you like to know of a place where you could be sure of getting a good one?"
"I shouldn't mind. Or, yes, I should, rather. Where's it to be?"
"Oh, I know. I've had my eye on the place for a good while. It's a funny old place in Sixth Avenue—"
"Sixth Avenue!"
"Don't interrupt—where the dearest old codger in the world is just going out of the house-furnishing business in a small way. It's kept getting smaller and smaller—I've watched it shrink—till now it can't stand up against the big shops, and the old codger told me the other day that it was no use."
"Poor fellow!"
"No. He's not badly off, and he's going back up-state where he came from about forty years ago, and he can live—or die—very well on what he's put by. I've known him rather a good while, and we've been friends ever since we've been acquainted."
"Go on," the elderly girl said.
Erlcort was not stopping, but she spoke so as to close her mouth, which she was apt to let hang open in a way that she did not like; she had her intimates pledged to tell her when she was doing it, but she could not make a man promise, and she had to look after her mouth herself with Erlcort. It was not a bad mouth; her eyes were large, and it was merely large to match them.