latt.
"There are plenty bird fanciers in this town."

The suggestion seemed to anger Samuel, who swore an English oath
and lapsed into silence.

Irma heard, but heeded little. Rosenblatt she feared, Samuel Sprink
she despised. There had been a time when both she and Paulina
regarded him with admiration mingled with awe. Samuel Sprink had
many attractions. He had always plenty of money to jingle, and had
a reputation for growing wealth. He was generous in his gifts to
the little girl--gifts, it must be confessed, that cost him little,
owing to his position as clerk in Rosenblatt's store. Then, too,
he was so clever with his smart English and his Canadian manners,
so magnificent with his curled and oily locks, his resplendent
jewelry, his brilliant neckties. But that was before Irma had been
brought to the little mission, and before she had learned through
Margaret Ketzel and through Margaret's father and mother something
of Canadian life, of Canadian people, of Canadian manners and dress.
As her knowledge in this direction extended, her admiration and
reverence for Samuel Sprink faded.

The day that Irma discarded her Galician garb and blossomed forth
as a Canadian young lady was the day on which she was fully cured
of her admiration for Rosenblatt's clerk. For such subtle influence
does dress exercise over the mind that something of the spirit of
the garb seems to pass into the spirit of the wearer. Self-respect
is often born in the tailor shop or in the costumer's parlour.
Be this as it may, it is certain that Irma's Canadian dress gave
the final blow to her admiration of Samuel Sprink, and child
though she was, she became conscious of a new power over not only
Sprink, but over all the boarders, and instinctively she assumed
a new attitude toward them. The old coarse and familiar horseplay
which she had permitted without thought at their hands, was now
distasteful to her. Indeed, with most of the men it ceased to be
any longer possible. There were a few, however, and Samuel Sprink
among them, who were either too dull-witted to recognise the change
that had come to the young girl, or were unwilling to acknowledge
it. Samuel was unwilling also to surrender his patronising and
protective attitude, and when patronage became impossible and
protection unnecessary, he assumed an air of bravado to cover
the feeling of embarrassment he hated to acknowledge, and tried
to bully the girl into her former submissive admiration.