Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/67

 Onnie Dever's wore when she stood on the shore and watched me run my boat aground.

The assistant saleswoman neither grinned nor smiled—she sniffed.

"This is a dinner dress," she said; "but if madam wants a golfing costume we have some rough tweeds"

It is not easy to guess why the mention of the lobster should have suggested golf to this damsel's mind. The word sport no doubt covers many things, and golf among them; but it can hardly be stretched to include the dragging of lobsters out of rocky holes along the shore.

She was never allowed to explain what her idea was. Miss Honoria Dever glanced at her. Without saying another word, without hearing one, the girl laid the dinner dress down on the chair and faded away. Such is the discipline maintained by the competent head of a department in a great store.

Then Onnie Dever Tom, no longer Honoria, turned to me with a flood of questions. I had to tell her a hundred intimate details about men and things—how this one was dead and that one married; how one cottage, known to both of us, was thatched last summer, and another had a new door; what boats caught mackerel, what hookers brought loads of winter fuel. For nearly an hour the business of selling ladies' dresses in that store was either