Читать книгу The Joss: A Reversion онлайн

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Not twenty minutes afterwards a girl came in—a mere chit—who wanted some passementerie, beaded. She had brought a pattern. Somehow directly I saw it I thought there would be trouble. I hunted through the stock and found the thing exactly, only there were blue beads where there ought to have been green. As there were a dozen different coloured beads it did not really matter, especially as ours were a green blue, and hers were a blue green. But that chit would not see it. She would not admit that it was a match. When I called Mr. Broadley, and he pointed out to her that the two were so much alike that, at a little distance, you could not tell one from the other, she was quite short. She caught up her old pattern and took herself away. Then Mr. Broadley gave it to me hot. He reminded me that that was two sales I had missed, and that three, on one day, meant dismissal. I did not suppose they would go so far as that, but I did expect that, if I missed again, it would cost me half-a-crown, at least. So, of course, there was I, as it were, on tenterhooks, resolved that rather than I would let anyone else go without a purchase I would force some elevenpence three-farthing thing on her; if I had to pay for it myself. And there was Mr. Broadley hanging about just by my stand, watching me so that I felt I should like to stick my scissors into him.