. "He won't be able to
bear the thought of having left a bad impression on me, and so he'll
come again to remove it. After all, there's something about him I can't
help liking. I said nothing that ought to have put him out of temper
like that, though; I only called him a boy."

"Let me tell you, Mary, you could not have called him a worse name."

"Why, what else is he?"

"A more offensive word a man could not hear from the lips of a woman,"
said George loftily.

"A man, I dare say! But Mr. Helmer can't be nineteen yet."

"How can you say so, when he told you himself he would be of age in a
few months? The fellow is older than I am. You'll be calling me a boy
next."

"What else are you? You at least are not one-and-twenty."

"And how old do you call yourself, pray, miss?"

"Three-and-twenty last birthday."

"A mighty difference indeed!"

"Not much--only all the difference, it seems, between sense and
absurdity, George."

"That may be all very true of a fine gentleman, like Helmer, that does
nothing from morning to night but run away from his mother; but you
don't think it applies to me, Mary, I hope!"

"That's as you behave yourself, George. If you do not make it apply, it
won't apply of itself. But if young women had not more sense than most
of the young men I see in the shop--on both sides of the counter,
George--things would soon be at a fine pass. Nothing better in your
head than in a peacock's!--only that a peacock _has_ the fine feathers
he's so proud of."

"If it were Mr. Wardour now, Mary, that was spreading his tail for you
to see, you would not complain of that peacock!"

A vivid rose blossomed instantly in Mary's cheek. Mr. Wardour was not
even an acquaintance of hers. He was cousin and friend to Letty Lovel,
indeed, but she had never spoken to him, except in the shop.

"It would not be quite out of place if you were to learn a little
respect for your superiors, George," she returned. "Mr. Wardour is not
to be thought of in the same moment with the young men that were in my
mind. Mr. Wardour is not a young man; and he is a gentleman."

She took the glove-box, and turning placed it on a shelf behind her.

"Just so!" remarked George, bitterly. "Any man you don't choose to
count a gentleman, you look down upon! What have you got to do with
gentlemen, I should like to know?"

"To admire one when I see him," answered Mary. "Why shouldn't I? It is
very seldom, and it does me good."

"Oh, yes