Sampson had
worked up for himself and took great pride in. They had begun by getting
their stage-costumes at Lynn's, and he had induced many of them to get
their other clothes there as well.

"As good as Paquin and half the price," he said.

He had a persuasive, hail-fellow well-met air with him which appealed to
customers of this sort, and they said to one another:

"What's the good of throwing money away when you can get a coat and skirt
at Lynn's that nobody knows don't come from Paris?"

Mr. Sampson was very proud of his friendship with the popular favourites
whose frocks he made, and when he went out to dinner at two o'clock on
Sunday with Miss Victoria Virgo--"she was wearing that powder blue we made
her and I lay she didn't let on it come from us, I 'ad to tell her meself
that if I 'adn't designed it with my own 'ands I'd have said it must come
from Paquin"--at her beautiful house in Tulse Hill, he regaled the
department next day with abundant details. Philip had never paid much
attention to women's clothes, but in course of time he began, a little
amused at himself, to take a technical interest in them. He had an eye for
colour which was more highly trained than that of anyone in the
department, and he had kept from his student days in Paris some knowledge
of line. Mr. Sampson, an ignorant man conscious of his incompetence, but
with a shrewdness that enabled him to combine other people's suggestions,
constantly asked the opinion of the assistants in his department in making
up new designs; and he had the quickness to see that Philip's criticisms
were valuable. But he was very jealous, and would never allow that he took
anyone's advice. When he had altered some drawing in accordance with
Philip's suggestion, he always finished up by saying:

"Well, it comes round to my own idea in the end."

One day, when Philip had been at the shop for five months, Miss Alice
Antonia, the well-known serio-comic, came in and asked to see Mr. Sampson.
She was a large woman, with flaxen hair, and a boldly painted face, a
metallic voice, and the breezy manner of a comedienne accustomed to be on
friendly terms with the gallery boys of provincial music-halls. She had a
new song and wished Mr. Sampson to design a costume for her.

"I want something striking," she said. "I don't want any old thing you
know. I want something different from what anybody else has."

Mr. Sampson, bland and familiar, said he was quite certain they cou