peaking. "That's all, I believe.
Good-morning."

At his hastily departing back she, too, murmured: "Good-morning."

Before I knew it I had screamed out loudly from my table: "But he hasn't
told you the day he wants it for!"

Before she knew it she had flown to the door--my cry had set her going,
as if I had touched a spring--and there he was at the door himself,
rushing back. He, too, had remembered. It was almost a collision, and
nothing but their good Southern breeding, the way they took it, saved it
from being like a rowdy farce.

"I know," he said simply and immediately. "I am sorry to be so careless.
It's for the twenty-seventh."

She was writing it down in the order-book. "Very well. That is Wednesday
of next week. You have given us more time than we need." She put
complete, impersonal business into her tone; and this time he marched
off in good order, leaving peace in the Woman's Exchange.

No, not peace; quiet, merely; the girl at the counter now proceeded to
grow indignant with me. We were alone together, we two; no young man,
or any other business, occupied her or protected me. But if you suppose
that she made war, or expressed rage by speaking, that is not it at
all. From her counter in front to my table at the back she made her
displeasure felt; she was inaudibly crushing; she did not do it even
with her eye, she managed it--well, with her neck, somehow, and by the
way she made her nose look in profile. Aunt Carola would have embraced
her--and I should have liked to do so myself. She could not stand the
idea of my having, after all these days of official reserve that she had
placed between us, startled her into that rush to the door annihilated
her dignity at a blow. So did I finish my sandwiches beneath her
invisible but eloquent fire. What affair of mine was the cake? And
what sort of impertinent, meddlesome person was I, shrieking out my
suggestions to people with whom I had no acquaintance? These were the
things that her nose and her neck said to me the whole length of the
Exchange. I had nothing but my own weakness to thank; it was my interest
in weddings that did it, made me forget my decorum, the public place,
myself, everything, and plunge in. And I became more and more delighted
over it as the girl continued to crush me. My day had been dull, my
researches had not brought me a whit nearer royal blood; I looked at
my little bill-of-fare, and then I stepped forward to the counter,
adventurous,