girls soon became aware of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes
your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man
who looked the role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of
men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to
stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric
squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty
was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces
before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were
certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy learned to
discriminate. There was a window at the end of the handkerchief
counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the
shoppers in the street below. She looked and perceived that
automobiles differ as well as do their owners.

Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and
wooed her across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had
gone one of the girls said:

"What's wrong, Nance, that you didn't warm up to that fellow. He
looks the swell article, all right, to me."

"Him?" said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van
Alstyne Fisher smile; "not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A
12 H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of
handkerchiefs he bought--silk! And he's got dactylis on him. Give me
the real thing or nothing, if you please."

Two of the most "refined" women in the store--a forelady and a
cashier--had a few "swell gentlemen friends" with whom they now and
then dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner
took place in a spectacular cafe whose tables are engaged for New
Year's eve a year in advance. There were two "gentlemen friends"--one
without any hair on his head--high living ungrew it; and we can prove
it--the other a young man whose worth and sophistication he impressed
upon you in two convincing ways--he swore that all the wine was
corked; and he wore diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived
irresistible excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and
here was one that added the voice and manners of his high social
world to the franker charms of her own caste. So, on the following
day, he appeared in the store and made her a serious proposal of
marriage over a box of hem-stitched, grass-bleached Irish linens.
Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away had been using her
eyes and ears. When the rejected suitor had gone