place: it was just possible I might have known him, and the
little coincidence would have been curious.

"Oh no," said the woman. "But I have often wondered why he changed his
mind. He seemed so sure about sending the order. It was not the price
that made him hesitate; but he wished his lady mother to make out the
list herself."

"Well, I confess the price _does_ make _me_ hesitate," I said, smiling.
"However, if you will let me buy this cup, I have great hopes of proving
a better customer than my faithless compatriot."

"I am sure he _meant_ to send the order," said the woman. She spoke
quite civilly, but I was not sure that she liked my calling him
"faithless."

"It is evident," I said to Frau von Walden, "that the good-looking
young Englishman made a great impression on her. I rather think she
gave _him_ the fellow cup for nothing."

But after all I had no reason to be jealous, for just then the woman
returned, after consulting the manager, to tell me I might have the cup
and saucer, and for a less sum than their real worth, seeing that I was
taking it, in a sense, as a pattern.

Then she wrapped it up for me, carefully and in several papers, of which
the outside one was bright blue; and, very proud of my acquisition, I
followed Frau von Walden to the other side of the building containing
the workrooms, where we found the two children full of interest about
all they had seen.

I should here, perhaps, apologise for entering into so much and
apparently trifling detail. But as will, I think, be seen when I have
told all I have to tell, it would be difficult to give the main facts
fairly, and so as to avoid all danger of any mistaken impression,
without relating the whole of the surroundings. If I tried to condense,
to pick out the salient points, to enter into no particulars but such
as directly and unmistakably lead up to the central interest, I might
unintentionally omit what those wiser than I would consider as bearing
on it. So, like a patient adjured by his doctor, or a client urged by
his lawyer, to tell the whole at the risk of long-windedness, I prefer
to run that risk, while claiming my readers' forgiveness for so doing,
rather than that of relating my story incompletely.

And what I would here beg to have specially observed is _that not one
word about the young Englishman had been heard by Nora_. She was, in
fact, in a distant part of the building at the time the saleswoman was
telling us about him.