an kept ribbon. The gentleman said "Surely,
surely!" and Robert's modest requirements were thereupon sent ringing
from a throat of brass into the uttermost recesses of the establishment,
and he himself was passed, hot-faced, along the fairway until he reached
the right department. Here his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth,
and the siren behind the counter, with difficulty stifling her
amusement, was reduced to discovering his needs by a process of
elimination.

"What will I show you?"

No answer.

"Ladies' gloves?"

A shake of the head.

"Handkerchiefs?"

Another shake.

"Stockings?"

Another shake, accompanied by a deepening of complexion.

"Well--ribbon?"

"Aye, that's it," replied Robert, suddenly finding his voice (which, by
the way, rather resembled the Last Trump). "Hauf a yaird--one inch
wide--satin--cream!" he roared mechanically.

He received the small parcel, and furtively fingering the money in his
pocket, asked the price.

"Two-three, please," replied the damsel briskly.

How Robert thanked his stars that he had some cash in hand! But what a
price! All that for a scrap of ribbon! It seemed sinful; but he laid two
shillings and threepence on the counter. Greatly to his alarm, the young
woman behind it, who up to this point had kept her feelings under
commendable control, suddenly collapsed like a punctured balloon on to
the shoulder of her nearest neighbour--there being no shop-walkers
about--and expressed a wish that she might be taken home and buried.
Finally she recovered sufficiently to push Robert's two shillings back
across the counter and to place his threepence in a mysterious
receptacle which she thrust into a hole in the wall, from which it was
ejected with much clatter a minute later; and on being opened proved to
contain what the dazed Robert at first took for a half-sovereign, but
which he ultimately discovered, when he had abandoned the still giggling
maiden and groped his way out into the street, to be a bright new
farthing.

The same day he returned to his home; but he did not reach it without
one more adventure, a slight one, it is true, but not without its effect
upon his future.

The train was over-full, and Robert ultimately found himself travelling
in company with nine other passengers, seven of whom were suffering from
that infirmity once poetically described by an expert in such diagnoses
as "a wee bit drappie in their een." The exception was a gentleman in
t