o a
hansom at the Marble Arch, having yielded no better result than the
amusement invoked from the first. The amusement, of course, was to have
consisted in seeking, but it had also involved the idea of finding;
which latter necessity would have been obtrusive only if they had found
too soon. The question at present was if they were finding, and they
put it to each other, in the Bloomsbury shop, while they enjoyed the
undiverted attention of the shopman. He was clearly the master, and
devoted to his business--the essence of which, in his conception,
might precisely have been this particular secret that he possessed for
worrying the customer so little that it fairly made for their relations
a sort of solemnity. He had not many things, none of the redundancy of
"rot" they had elsewhere seen, and our friends had, on entering, even
had the sense of a muster so scant that, as high values obviously
wouldn't reign, the effect might be almost pitiful. Then their
impression had changed; for, though the show was of small pieces,
several taken from the little window and others extracted from a
cupboard behind the counter--dusky, in the rather low-browed place,
despite its glass doors--each bid for their attention spoke, however
modestly, for itself, and the pitch of their entertainer's pretensions
was promptly enough given. His array was heterogeneous and not at all
imposing; still, it differed agreeably from what they had hitherto seen.

Charlotte, after the incident, was to be full of impressions, of several
of which, later on, she gave her companion--always in the interest of
their amusement--the benefit; and one of the impressions had been that
the man himself was the greatest curiosity they had looked at. The
Prince was to reply to this that he himself hadn't looked at him; as,
precisely, in the general connection, Charlotte had more than once, from
other days, noted, for his advantage, her consciousness of how, below
a certain social plane, he never SAW. One kind of shopman was just like
another to him--which was oddly inconsequent on the part of a mind that,
where it did notice, noticed so much. He took throughout, always, the
meaner sort for granted--the night of their meanness, or whatever name
one might give it for him, made all his cats grey. He didn't, no doubt,
want to hurt them, but he imaged them no more than if his eyes acted
only for the level of his own high head. Her own vision acted for
every relation--this he