remarks, but she answered with
monosyllables. She had taken their measure. They were boys, and she
surmised they were students. She had no use for them. Dunsford noticed
that a man with sandy hair and a bristly moustache, who looked like a
German, was favoured with her attention whenever he came into the shop;
and then it was only by calling her two or three times that they could
induce her to take their order. She used the clients whom she did not know
with frigid insolence, and when she was talking to a friend was perfectly
indifferent to the calls of the hurried. She had the art of treating women
who desired refreshment with just that degree of impertinence which
irritated them without affording them an opportunity of complaining to the
management. One day Dunsford told him her name was Mildred. He had heard
one of the other girls in the shop address her.

"What an odious name," said Philip.

"Why?" asked Dunsford.

"I like it."

"It's so pretentious."

It chanced that on this day the German was not there, and, when she
brought the tea, Philip, smiling, remarked:

"Your friend's not here today."

"I don't know what you mean," she said coldly.

"I was referring to the nobleman with the sandy moustache. Has he left you
for another?"

"Some people would do better to mind their own business," she retorted.

She left them, and, since for a minute or two there was no one to attend
to, sat down and looked at the evening paper which a customer had left
behind him.

"You are a fool to put her back up," said Dunsford.

"I'm really quite indifferent to the attitude of her vertebrae," replied
Philip.

But he was piqued. It irritated him that when he tried to be agreeable
with a woman she should take offence. When he asked for the bill, he
hazarded a remark which he meant to lead further.

"Are we no longer on speaking terms?" he smiled.

"I'm here to take orders and to wait on customers. I've got nothing to say
to them, and I don't want them to say anything to me."

She put down the slip of paper on which she had marked the sum they had to
pay, and walked back to the table at which she had been sitting. Philip
flushed with anger.

"That's one in the eye for you, Carey," said Dunsford, when they got
outside.

"Ill-mannered slut," said Philip. "I shan't go there again."

His influence with Dunsford was strong enough to get him to take their tea
elsewhere, and Dunsford soon found another young woman to flir