“Seer Marcous, is this the marriage market?”
“The what?” I gasped.
“The marriage market. I read it in a book, yesterday. Miss Griggs gave it me to read aloud—Tack—Thack—”
“Thackeray?”
“Ye-es. They come here to sell the young girls to men who want wives.” She edged away from me, with a little movement of alarm. “That is not why you have brought me here—to sell me?”
“How much do you think you would be worth?” I asked, sarcastically.
She opened out her hands palms upward, throwing down her parasol, as she did so, upon her neighbour’s little Belgian griffon, who yelped.
“Ch, lots,” she said in her frank way. “I am very beautiful.”
I picked up the parasol, bowed apologetically to the owner of the stricken animal, and addressed Carlotta.
“Listen, my good child. You are passably good-looking, but you are by no means very beautiful. If I tried to sell you here, you might possibly fetch half a crown—”