She had given me her promise to become my wife.
Chapter Twenty.
One Man’s Hand.
In the hour that followed many were our mutual declarations, many were the kisses I imprinted upon those lips, with their true Cupid’s bow, without which no woman’s beauty is entirely perfect.
From her conversation I gathered that the assistants at the great shop in the Holloway Road were treated, as they often are, as mere machines, the employers having no more regard for their health or mental recreation than for the cash balls which roll along the inclined planes to the cash-desk. Life within that great series of shops was mere drudgery and slavery, the galling bonds of which only those who have had experience of it can fully appreciate.
“From the time we open till closing time we haven’t a single moment’s rest,” she said, in reply to my question, “and with nearly eighty fines for breaking various rules, and a staff of tyrannical shop-walkers who are always either fining us or abusing us before the customers, things are utterly unbearable.”
“Yes,” I said, indignantly, “the tyrannies of shop life ought to be exposed.”
“Indeed they ought,” she agreed. “One of our rules fines us a shilling if after serving a customer we don’t introduce at least two articles to her.”