they're asking without examining the article.
Girls ain't a special make, like what you seem to think 'em. We're all
turned out of the same old slop shop."

"Not that I say, mind yer," he would continue, "that there are none of
the right sort. They're to be 'ad--real good 'uns. All I say is, taking
'em at their own valuation ain't the way to do business with 'em."

What he was on the look out for--to quote his own description--was a
really first class article, not something from which the paint would
come off almost before you got it home.

"They're to be found," he would cheerfully affirm, "but you've got to
look for 'em. They're not the sort that advertises."

Behind Jarman in the second floor back resided one whom Jarman had
nicknamed "The Lady 'Ortensia." I believe before my arrival there had
been love passages between the two; but neither of them, so I gathered,
had upon closer inspection satisfied the other's standard. Their present
attitude towards each other was that of insult thinly veiled under
exaggerated politeness. Miss Rosina Sellars was, in her own language,
a "lady assistant," in common parlance, a barmaid at the Ludgate Hill
Station refreshment room. She was a large, flabby young woman. With less
powder, her complexion might by admirers have been termed creamy; as it
was, it presented the appearance rather of underdone pastry. To be on
all occasions "quite the lady" was her pride. There were those who held
the angle of her dignity to be exaggerated. Jarman would beg her for her
own sake to be more careful lest one day she should fall down backwards
and hurt herself. On the other hand, her bearing was certainly
calculated to check familiarity. Even stockbrokers' clerks--young men
as a class with the bump of reverence but poorly developed--would in her
presence falter and grow hesitating. She had cultivated the art of
not noticing to something approaching perfection. She could draw the
noisiest customer a glass of beer, which he had never ordered; exchange
it for three of whiskey, which he had; take his money and return him his
change without ever seeing him, hearing him, or knowing he was there. It
shattered the self-assertion of the youngest of commercial travellers.
Her tone and manner, outside rare moments of excitement, were suggestive
of an offended but forgiving iceberg. Jarman invariably passed her with
his coat collar turned up to his ears, and even thus protected might
have been observed to s