ce; but the
attendants,--who were girls, with lovely figures and their hair done in
exactly the same flop over their foreheads,--were so interested in
talking about a young man they all knew, that it seemed cruel to
interrupt them, especially as I mightn't buy the sunshade in the end.
However, I did venture to speak, in quite a humble voice, by and by,
but the girl couldn't understand a word until I'd repeated everything
twice. "A sunshade? Oh, you mean one of these parasawls," she said
then. "Excuse me, it's your English accent I didn't quite catch at
first. That one's ten dollars and forty-nine cents, and this is eight
dollars, eighty-nine."

While we were busy doing the dollars into pounds and shillings, we got
quite friendly, for she was a very obliging girl, and didn't bear me
any grudge for interrupting, though her friends were going on with
their conversation and telling such exciting things about the young man
that she must have been dying to listen.

However, my girl hardly paid any attention to them at all, except just
to get mixed up in her answers to me once or twice. She said it was
very difficult to understand English people on account of their not
opening their mouths much when they spoke, and their accent being so
strong. I found this odd, because we always feel as if, the English
language having been started by us, it is Americans who have an accent;
but it seems that a great many people in the States dislike the way we
talk, very much, and consider it extremely affected.

After all the trouble she had taken, I felt dreadfully not to buy
anything of her, but the sunshades were too expensive, though she said
they were marked down. I took a Japanese fan instead, which pops out at
you like a Jack-in-the-box, from a fat red stick; and even that was a
dollar and twenty-five cents when I thought it would be sixpence. On
the way to meet Mrs. Ess Kay and Sally at the notion counter, I
enquired the price of a good many other superlatively beautiful things,
but they were all superlatively high, as well; and by the time a very
dashing young man, who said he was a "floor-walker," had steered me to
the notions, I felt as if I were the only cheap thing in the whole
shop. To be sure, there were some embroidered collars and American
flag-headed hat-pins, and flowered muslin wrappers which I could have
had without ruining myself, if I had wanted them. But I didn't; and
what I should like to know is, what does a girl