ily I would have finished
your dress with my own hands. Sure I would. If you come here to-morrow
noon you find your dress all ready for you."

"I know I won't, but I will come, and you'd _better_ have it ready."

"Oh, sure."

The lady then added some generalities of opprobrium with some
particular criticisms of the garments. Her voice sank into
dispassionate murmurs in these, but it rose again in her renewed sense
of the wrong done her, and when she came from the alcove she went out
of the street door purple. She reopened it to say, "Now, remember!"
before she definitely disappeared.

"Rather a stormy session, Mr. Morrison," the customer said.

"Something fierce," Mr. Morrison sighed. But he did not seem much
troubled, and he had one way with all his victims, no matter what mood
they came or went in.

One day the customer was by when a kind creature timidly upbraided
him. "This is the third time you've disappointed me, Mr. Morrison. I
really wish you wouldn't promise me unless you mean to do it. I don't
think it's right for you."

"Oh, but sure, madam! The things will be done, sure. We had a strike
on us."

"Well, I will trust you once more," the kind creature said.

"You can depend on me, madam, sure."

When she was gone the customer said: "I wonder you do that sort of
thing, Mr. Morrison. You can't be surprised at their behaving rustily
with you if you never keep your word."

"Why, I assure you there are times when I don't know where to look,
the way they go on. It is something awful. You ought to hear them
once. And now they want the wote." He rearranged some pieces of
tumbled goods at the table where the customer sat, and put together
the disheveled leaves of the fashion-papers which looked as if the
ladies had scattered them in their rage.

One day the customer heard two ladies waiting for their
disappointments in the outer room while the tailor in the alcove was
trying to persuade a third lady that positively her things would be
sent home the next day before dark. The customer had now formed the
habit of having his own clothes made by the tailor, and his system in
avoiding disappointment was very simple. In the early fall he ordered
a spring suit, and in the late spring it was ready. He never had any
difficulty, but he was curious to learn how the ladies managed, and he
listened with all his might while these two talked.

"I always wonder we keep coming," one of them said.

"I'll tell you why,"