yment until
delivery."

"But--a--but on that morning I shall be rather particularly engaged."
His tones sank almost away on these words.

"We should prefer to wait, then. You will leave your address. In
half-pound boxes, I suppose?"

"Boxes? Oh, yes--I hadn't thought--no--just a big, round one. Like this,
you know!" His arms embraced a circular space of air. "With plenty of
icing."

I do not think that there was any smile on the other side of the
counter; there was, at any rate, no hint of one in the voice. "And how
many pounds?"

He was again staggered. "Why--a--I never ordered one before. I want
plenty--and the very best, the very best. Each person would eat a pound,
wouldn't they? Or would two be nearer? I think I had better leave it
all to you. About like this, you know." Once more his arms embraced a
circular space of air.

Before this I had never heard the young lady behind the counter enter
into any conversation with a customer. She would talk at length about
all sorts of Kings Port affairs with the older ladies connected with the
Exchange, who were frequently to be found there; but with a customer,
never. She always took my orders, and my money, and served me, with a
silence and a propriety that have become, with ordinary shopkeepers, a
lost art. They talk to one indeed! But this slim girl was a lady, and
consequently did the right thing, marking and keeping a distance between
herself and the public. To-day, however, she evidently felt it her
official duty to guide the hapless young, man amid his errors. He now
appeared to be committing a grave one.

"Are you quite sure you want that?" the girl was asking.

"Lady Baltimore? Yes, that is what I want."

"Because," she began to explain, then hesitated, and looked at him.
Perhaps it was in his face; perhaps it was that she remembered at this
point the serious difference between the price of Lady Baltimore (by
my small bill-of-fare I was now made acquainted with its price) and the
cost of that rich article which convention has prescribed as the cake
for weddings; at any rate, swift, sudden delicacy of feeling prevented
her explaining any more to him, for she saw how it was: his means were
too humble for the approved kind of wedding cake! She was too young, too
unskilled yet in the world's ways, to rise above her embarrassment; and
so she stood blushing at him behind the counter, while he stood blushing
at her in front of it.

At length he succeeded in s