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 speaking. "That's all, I believe.