Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/14

2 for. Directly after I came up, feeling hungrier than ever, Miss Patten did me out of the sale of a lot of sequin trimming on which there was a ninepenny spiff. I was showing it to a customer, and before I had had half a chance she came and took it clean out of my hands, and sold it right away. It made me crosser than ever. To crown it all, I missed three sales. One lady wanted a veil, and because we had not just the sort she wanted, when she walked out of the shop Mr. Broadley seemed to think it was my fault. He said he would mark me. When some people want a triangular spot you cannot put them off with a round one. It is no use your saying you can. And so I as good as told him.

Not twenty minutes afterwards a girl came in—a mere chit—who wanted some passementerie, beaded. She had brought a pattern. Somehow directly I saw it I thought there would be trouble. I hunted through the stock and found the thing exactly, only there were blue beads where there ought to have been green. As there were a dozen different coloured beads it did not really matter, especially as ours were a green blue, and hers were a blue green. But that chit would not see it. She would not admit that it was a match. When I called Mr. Broadley, and he pointed out to her that the two were so much alike that, at a little distance, you could not tell one from the other, she was quite short. She caught up her old pattern and took herself away. Then Mr. Broadley gave it to me hot. He reminded me that that was two sales I had missed, and that three, on one day, meant dismissal. I did not suppose they would go so far as that, but I did expect that, if I missed again, it would cost me half-a-crown, at least. So, of course, there was I, as it were, on tenterhooks, resolved that rather than I would let anyone else go without a purchase I would force some elevenpence three-farthing thing on her; if I had to pay for it myself.