aid the saleslady, giggling openly.

"Green," said Jethro, with considerable emphasis.

The saleslady clapped her hand over her mouth and led the way to another
model.

"You don't call that green--do you? That's not green enough."

They inspected another dress, and then another and another,--not all of
them were green,--Jethro expressing very decided if not expert views on
each of them. At last he paused before two models at the far end of the
room, passing his hand repeatedly over each as he had done so often with
the cattle of Coniston.

"These two pieces same kind of goods?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"Er-this one is a little shinier than that one?"

"Perhaps the finish is a little higher," ventured the saleslady.

"Sh-shinier," said Jethro.

"Yes, shinier, if you please to call it so."

"W-what would you call it?"

By this time the saleslady had become quite hysterical, and altogether
incapable of performing her duties. Jethro looked at her for a moment in
disgust, and in his predicament cast around for another to wait on him.
There was no lack of these, at a safe distance, but they all seemed to be
affected by the same mania. Jethro's eye alighted upon the back of
another customer. She was, apparently, a respectable-looking lady of
uncertain age, and her own attention was so firmly fixed in the
contemplation of a model that she had not remarked the merriment about
her, nor its cause. She did not see Jethro, either, as he strode across
to her. Indeed, her first intimation of his presence was a dig in her
arm. The lady turned, gave a gasp of amazement at the figure confronting
her, and proceeded to annihilate it with an eye that few women possess.

"H-how do, Ma'am," he said. Had he known anything about the appearance of
women in general, he might have realized that he had struck a tartar.
This lady was at least sixty-five, and probably unmarried. Her face,
though not at all unpleasant, was a study in character-development: she
wore ringlets, a peculiar bonnet of a bygone age, and her clothes had
certain eccentricities which, for, lack of knowledge, must be omitted. In
short, the lady was no fool, and not being one she glanced at the
giggling group of saleswomen and--wonderful to relate--they stopped
giggling. Then she looked again at Jethro and gave him a smile. One of
superiority, no doubt, but still a smile.

"How do you do, sir?"

"T-trying to buy a silk cloth gown for a woman. There's two over here