Lifted Masks | Page 2

who confidently asked her what kind of ribbon to buy for his
mother.
"Was it for your wife you were thinking of buying these red
stockings?" she ventured.
"Sure. What do you think of 'em? Look as if they came from Paris all
right, don't they?"
"Oh, they look as though they came from Paris, all right," Virginia
repeated, a bit grimly. "But do you know"--this quite as to that little
boy who might be buying the ribbon--"American women don't always
care for all the things that look as if they came from Paris. Is your
wife--does she care especially for red stockings?"
"Don't believe she ever had a pair in her life. That's why I thought it
might please her."
Virginia looked down and away. There were times when dimples made
things hard for one.
Then she said, with gentle gravity: "There are quite a number of
women in America who don't care much for red stockings. It would
seem too bad, wouldn't it, if after you got these clear home your wife
should turn out to be one of those people? Now, I think these grey
stockings are lovely. I'm sure any woman would love them. She could
wear them with grey suede slippers and they would be so soft and
pretty."
"Um--not very lively looking, are they? You see I want something to
cheer her up. She--well she's not been very well lately and I thought
something--oh something with a lot of dash in it, you know, would just
fill the bill. But look here. We'll take both. Sure--that's the way out of it.
If she don't like the red, she'll like the grey, and if she don't like
the--You like the grey ones, don't you? Then here"--picking up two
pairs of the handsomely embroidered grey stockings and handing them

to the clerk--"One," holding up his thumb to denote one--"me,"--a
vigorous pounding of the chest signifying me. "One"--holding up his
forefinger and pointing to the girl--"mademoiselle."
"Oh no--no--no!" cried Virginia, her face instantly the colour of the
condemned stockings. Then, standing straight: "Certainly not."
"No? Just as you say," he replied good humouredly. "Like to have you
have 'em. Seems as if strangers in a strange land oughtn't to stand on
ceremony."
The clerk was bending forward holding up the stockings alluringly.
"_Pour mademoiselle, n'est-ce-pas_?"
"_Mais--non!_" pronounced Virginia, with emphasis.
There followed an untranslatable gesture. "How droll!" shoulder and
outstretched hands were saying. "If the kind gentleman wishes to give
mademoiselle the _joli bas_--!"
His face had puckered up again. Then suddenly it unpuckered. "Tell
you what you might do," he solved it. "Just take 'em along and send
them to your mother. Now your mother might be real glad to have 'em."
Virginia stared. And then an awful thing happened. What she was
thinking about was the letter she could send with the stockings.
"Mother dear," she would write, "as I stood at the counter buying
myself some stockings to-day along came a nice man--a stranger to me,
but very kind and jolly--and gave me--"
There it was that the awful thing happened. Her dimple was
showing--and at thought of its showing she could not keep it from
showing! And how could she explain why it was showing without its
going on showing? And how--?
But at that moment her gaze fell upon the clerk, who had taken the
dimple as signal to begin putting the stockings in a box. The
Frenchwoman's eyebrows soon put that dimple in its proper place.
"And so the petite Americaine was not too--oh, not _too_--" those
French eyebrows were saying.
All in an instant Virginia was something quite different from a little girl
with a dimple. "You are very kind," she was saying, and her mother
herself could have done it no better, "but I am sure our little joke had
gone quite far enough. I bid you good-morning". And with that she
walked regally over to the glove counter, leaving red and grey and
black hosiery to their own destinies.

"I loathe them when their eyebrows go up," she fumed. "Now his
weren't going up--not even in his mind."
She could not keep from worrying about him. "They'll just 'do' him,"
she was sure. "And then laugh at him in the bargain. A man like that
has no business to be let loose in a store all by himself."
And sure enough, a half hour later she came upon him up in the dress
department. Three of them had gathered round to "do" him. They were
making rapid headway, their smiling deference scantily concealing
their amused contempt. The spectacle infuriated Virginia. "They just
think they can work us!" she stormed. "They think we're easy. I
suppose they think he's a fool. I just wish they could get him in a
business