Lady Baltimore | Page 7

trust) lucratively conduct, in Royal
Street.
Royal Street! There's a relevance in this name, a fitness to my errand;
but that is pure accident.
The Woman's Exchange happened to be there, a decorous resort for
those who became hungry, as I did, at the hour of noon each day. In my
very pleasant boarding-house, where, to be sure, there was one dreadful
boarder, a tall lady, whom I soon secretly called Juno--but let
unpleasant things wait--in the very pleasant house where I boarded (I
had left my hotel after one night) our breakfast was at eight, and our
dinner not until three: sacred meal hours in Kings Port, as inviolable, I
fancy, as the Declaration of Independence, but a gap quite beyond the
stretch of my Northern vitals. Therefore, at twelve, it was my habit to
leave my Fanning researches for a while, and lunch at the Exchange
upon chocolate and sandwiches most delicate in savor. As, one day, I
was luxuriously biting one of these, I heard his voice and what he was
saying. Both the voice and the interesting order he was giving caused
me, at my small table, in the dim back of the room, to stop and watch
him where he stood in the light at the counter to the right of the
entrance door. Young he was, very young, twenty-two or three at the
most, and as he stood, with hat in hand, speaking to the pretty girl
behind the counter, his head and side-face were of a romantic and
high-strung look. It was a cake that he desired made, a cake for a
wedding; and I directly found myself curious to know whose wedding.
Even a dull wedding interests me more than other dull events, because
it can arouse so much surmise and so much prophecy; but in this
wedding I instantly, because of his strange and winning embarrassment,

became quite absorbed. How came it he was ordering the cake for it?
Blushing like the boy that he was entirely, he spoke in a most engaging
voice: "No, not charged; and as you don't know me, I had better pay for
it now."
Self-possession in his speech he almost had; but the blood in his cheeks
and forehead was beyond his control.
A reply came from behind the counter: "We don't expect payment until
delivery."
"But--a--but on that morning I shall be rather particularly engaged." His
tones sank almost away on these words.
"We should prefer to wait, then. You will leave your address. In
half-pound boxes, I suppose?"
"Boxes? Oh, yes--I hadn't thought--no--just a big, round one. Like this,
you know!" His arms embraced a circular space of air. "With plenty of
icing."
I do not think that there was any smile on the other side of the counter;
there was, at any rate, no hint of one in the voice. "And how many
pounds?"
He was again staggered. "Why--a--I never ordered one before. I want
plenty--and the very best, the very best. Each person would eat a pound,
wouldn't they? Or would two be nearer? I think I had better leave it all
to you. About like this, you know." Once more his arms embraced a
circular space of air.
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