The Day of Days | Page 7

glove counter with a good fifteen minutes to
spare.
And there he halted, confused and blushing in recognition of
circumstances as unpropitious as unforeseen.
These consisted in three girls behind the counter and one customer
before it; the latter commanding the attention and services of a fair
young woman with a pleasant manner; while of the two disengaged
saleswomen, one bold, disdainful brunette was preoccupied with her
back hair and prepared mutinously to ignore anything remotely
resembling a belated customer whose demands might busy her beyond
the closing hour, and the other had a merry eye and a receptive smile
for the hesitant little man with the funny clothes and the quaint pink
face of embarrassment. In most abject consternation, P. Sybarite turned
and fled.
Weathering the end of the glove counter and shaping a course through
the aisle that paralleled it, he found himself in a channel of horrors,
threatened on one side by a display of most intimate lingerie, belaced
and beribboned distractingly, on the other by a long rank of slender and
gracious (if stolid) feminine limbs, one and all neatly amputated above
their bended knees and bedight in silken hosiery to shame the rainbow;
while to right and left, behind these impudent revelations, lurked sirens
with shameless eyes and mouths of scarlet mockery.
A cold sweat damped the forehead of P. Sybarite. Inconsistently, his
face flamed. He stared fixedly dead ahead and tore through that aisle
like a delicate-minded jack-rabbit. He thought giggles were audible in
his wake; and ere he could escape found his way barred by Authority
and Dignity in one wonderfully frock-coated person.
"You were looking for something?" demanded this menace incarnate,
in an awful voice accompanied by a terrible gesture.
P. Sybarite brought up standing, his nose six inches from and his eyes
held in fascination to the imitation pearl scarf-pin in the beautiful
cravat affected by his interlocutor.
"Gloves--!" he gasped guiltily.
"This way, if you please."
With this, Dignity and Authority clamped an inexorable hand about his

upper arm, swung him round, and piloted him gently but ruthlessly
back the way he had come, back to the glove counter, where he was
planted directly in front of the dashing, dark saleslady with absorbing
back hair and the manner of remote hauteur.
"Miss Brady, this gentleman wants to see some gloves."
The eyes of Miss Brady flashed ominously; as plain as print, they said:
"Does, does he? Well, leave him to _me_!"
Aloud, she murmured from an incalculable distance: "Oh, ve-ry well!"
A moment later, looking over the customer's head, she added icily:
"What kind?"
The floor-walker retired, leaving P. Sybarite a free agent but none the
less haunted by a feeling that a suspicious eye was being kept on the
small of his back. He stammered something quite inarticulate.
The brune goddess shaped ironic lips:
"Chauffeurs', I presoom?"
A measure of self-possession--akin to the deadly coolness of the
cornered rat--returned to the badgered little man.
"No," he said evenly--"ladies', if you please."
Scornfully Miss Brady impaled the back of her head with a lead pencil.
"Other end of the counter, please," she announced. "I don't handle
ladies' gloves!"
"I'm sure of that," returned P. Sybarite meekly; left her standing; and
presented himself for the inspection of the fair young woman with the
pleasant manner, who was now free of her late customer.
She recognised him with surprise, but none the less with a friendly
smile.
"Why, Mr. Sybarite--!"
In his hearing, her voice was rarest music. He gulped; stammered "Miss
Lessing!" and was stricken dumb by perception of his effrontery.
"Can I do anything for you?"
He breathed in panic: "Gloves--"
"For a lady, Mr. Sybarite?"
He nodded as expressively as any automaton.
"What kind?"
"I--I don't know."
"For day or evening wear?"
He wagged a dismal head: "I don't know."

Amusement touched her eyes and lips so charmingly that he thought of
the sea at dawn, rimpled by the morning breeze, gay with the laughter
of young sunlight.
"Surely you must!" she insisted.
"No," he contended in stubborn melancholy.
"Oh, I see. You wish to make a present--?"
"I--ah--suppose so," he admitted under pressure--"yes."
"Evening gloves are always acceptable. Does she go often to the
theatre?"
"I--don't know."
The least suspicion of perplexed frown knitted the eyebrows of Miss
Lessing.
"Well ... is she old or young?"
"I--ah--couldn't say."
"Mr. Sybarite!" said the young woman with decision.
He fixed an apprehensive gaze to hers--which inclined to disapproval,
if with reservations.
"Yes, Miss Lessing?"
"Do you really want to buy gloves?"
"No-o...."
"Then what under the sun do you want?"
He noticed suddenly that, however impatient her tone, her eyes were
still kindly. Eyes of luminous hazel brown they were, wide open and
clear beneath dark and delicate brows; eyes that assorted