The Youths Companion | Page 6

young man's smile faded away. "I'm afraid, Miss Morden, they're all busy. Can I show you anything?"
"Have you any cuspadores among your new pottery?"
"What did you say?" asked Tom.
"I said cuspadores. I presume you know what they are."
Now Jordan didn't know any better than she what cuspadores are. But he, too, had a reputation to support for knowing everything in his line of business. He was not going to peril it at a counter full of gaping customers by acknowledging his ignorance.
He would question her a little, to find out what it was.
He put his finger to his forehead, and shut his eyes, as if trying to remember where the cuspadores were placed.
"What style do you wish? The fact is, there are so many different shapes in vogue now."
"Oh, the most antique, of course. I doat on those queer antique things."
His head in a whirl, Tom rushed into the back room, leaving Silvia conversing with some acquaintances who had come in. From the back room he ran into an office where the book-keeper, who was lately from Philadelphia, was absorbed over a column of figures.
"Ralston, what under the sun is a cuspadore?" he cried.
"It's a spittoon,--a spit-box,--you ninny! If you interrupt me again, I'll shy mine at your head!"
"Whew!" whistled Tom. "Who'd have thought that 'toploftical' young miss, with her airs and graces, used tobacco? I s'pose she rubs, or maybe she smokes. One never knows, Ralston, what girls are up to."
"But I know what I'll be up to if you don't clear out!" cried the angry book-keeper.
Tom rummaged the warehouse, and found a common earthenware spittoon, which he dragged out in triumph.
"I wonder if she thinks she can buy spittoons by a new-fangled name," he muttered, "and nobody know what she wants 'em for? I'll let her know she can't put her finger in my eye. That's why she wanted another clerk."
With a flourish and a smirk, Tom deposited the spittoon on the counter under Silvia's astonished eyes.
"Here's a cuspadore, Miss Morden; not the very finest article, but it serves every purpose. Cleans easy, too, and that's the great thing, after all. Shall I send you a pair?"
Utterly astonished and struck dumb, Silvia stood gazing at the hideous thing.
"And look here, Miss Morden," dropping his voice to a confidential whisper, "we've got the finest lot of tobacco and the best snuff you ever used. Oh, I know,--I'll not mention it. Young ladies, of course, have their little secrets,--I understand that, and I'll be upon honor, 'pon my word I will."
"You insulting creature!" Silvia gasped.
Her look and tone caused Tom to back, and bump his head so violently against a shelf that, for a minute, he was blind. When he recovered his sight, Silvia had left the store, and the people at the counter were gazing with wide-open eyes on the scene.
"What did you say to Miss Morden, that she flew off in such a rage?" asked a tall, gaunt, spectacled old maid,--Miss James,--who was the terror of the town for her ill-natured gossip and interfering ways.
"Upon my word, ma'am, I said nothing insulting," replied the angered clerk. "Miss Silvia asked for a spittoon, and I showed her one. Of course people do not want spittoons unless they use tobacco, do they? I am sure I meant no harm. I only wanted to accommodate a customer."
"Of course, of course," said his grim listener. "Judge Morden and her ma don't dream of their daughter's goings-on, I'm sure of that. I'm a friend, and they'll know it before I'm an hour older."
She stalked out of the store, and down to Judge Morden's house. Without ringing, she marched into the sitting-room, where Mrs. Morden was at work.
"Clara Morden," she said, in her sharpest tones, for she was an old acquaintance of the lady, "how have you brought up your daughter, that she's disgracing you?"
"Disgracing! Are you talking of Silvia?"
Gentle Mrs. Morden's face was pale as she turned her startled eyes on her visitor.
"Who else? Don't you think it a disgrace for a girl to use tobacco? and that's what Sil does, and goes and buys a spittoon before the whole town! I'd tobacco her! But everybody knows it by this time, and whether she gives it up or not, people will keep on thinking she uses it. You always did give that girl too much head, I've told you so time and again, and now you see you'd better have taken my advice."
Mrs. Morden had regained her calmness by this time.
"There is certainly some mistake," she said, coolly. "I will ask Silvia about it when she comes in."
"You'll find it no mistake," said her visitor. "At least half-a-dozen people were in Morris's this evening when she asked for the spittoon, and then got mad with the clerk about something."
The explanation Silvia was compelled