It was not at all hard for Jessie to imagine the picture after the vivid description she had received of Miss Asenath. "I'll bet she'll look just lovely," she declared warmly, "and it certainly is a splendid match! No one could have matched it better!"
The other girls made a smiling affirmation to this verdict.
Mrs. Bixby turned around from her own conversation at the sudden sound of these animated voices so close to her and lifted her gold lorgnette to examine Arethusa.
"This girl was waiting on me, I believe," she said, indicating Jessie with a wave of her aristocratic hand, and speaking in a pleasantly acid tone that was intended to consign Arethusa to nothingness forever.
But Arethusa gave no smallest sign of doing so.
"She was waiting on me, long before you ever saw her!"
That lorgnette could but irritate Arethusa.
Mrs. Bixby glanced up and down, and then through her.
"Indeed! I think you're mistaken!" Then to Jessie. "I wasn't through, girl."
She was torn between her desire to serve Arethusa, whom, girl-like, she had voted a darling, and her great fear of offending one so powerful as Mrs. Bixby. The floor-walker suddenly turned his attention in their direction, which added to her agitation. But she need not have worried quite so much; her first customer made a sturdy champion of any cause, and she was still most undaunted, lorgnette or no lorgnette.
"There's a whole stack of girls here," declared Arethusa hotly, "and just because you can't help being disagreeable, you want the same one I have! Jessie sold me this shawl before you ever came, and she let me take it over to match it in ribbon!"
Mrs. Bixby displayed an interest. She raised the lorgnette once more.
"It's none of your business whether I had or not! It's not your store, is it? But I hadn't, so there, if you really want to know!"
"I shall report you immediately," said Mrs. Bixby, majestically to Jessie, "for allowing goods to be taken away from your counter without being paid for, and for not waiting on your customers properly. You were very impudent. And...."
"Why, you're a horrible old woman!" interrupted Arethusa, as if the discovery was most surprising. "A perfectly horrible old woman! But go right ahead and report, if you want to! I reckon it won't hurt anything very much, because I brought the shawl back and I'm going to charge it right now, this very minute!"
