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,