Day's cheeks. She wiped them away
furtively with her hand, but he saw them. Saw, and resented them with the
impatient sense of injury a woman's tears arouse in that order of man. He
turned his back upon her, and began fingering the lemons displayed in a
box on the other counter.
"Think over what I've said, ma'am. Words of wisdom you've heard, and every
one of 'em for your good. And see that your young man carries out my
suggestion for the window to-morrow, will you? Miss Bessie upstairs?"
Mrs. Day, staring into the street through her tears, said she believed her
daughter was in the sitting-room.
"I'll just run up and pay my respects to Miss Bessie, then."
He had adopted the habit, of late, of going up to pay his respects in that
quarter after every business interview in the shop. Bessie pretended to
look upon the predilection for her society as presumption on George
Boult's part.
"A man as old as my own father!" she often said to Emily, with whom she
had many confidences.
"All the more reason for him to come fascinatin' round you," Emily
declared.
How this ill-favoured, more than middle-aged spinster came to be an
authority on affairs of the heart she would have found it difficult to
explain; but she had ever an opinion to offer on such matters, and she
gave it with a weightiness and a conclusiveness which rendered it final.
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