Theron moved about in the group, nursing her parasol in his arms, and watching her.  The exaggerated deference which the clerks and salesmen showed to her as the rich Miss Madden, seemed to him to be mixed with a certain assertion of the claims of good-fellowship on the score of her being a musician.  There undoubtedly was a sense of freemasonry between them.  They alluded continually in technical terms to matters of which he knew nothing, and were amused at remarks of hers which to him carried no meaning whatever.  It was evident that the young men liked her, and that their liking pleased her.  It thrilled him to think that she knew he liked her, too, and to recall what abundant proofs she had given that here, also, she had pleasure in the fact.  He clung insistently to the memory of these evidences.  They helped him to resist a disagreeable tendency to feel himself an intruder, an outsider, among these pianoforte experts.

When it was all over, Celia waved the others aside, and talked with Theron.  “I suppose you want me to tell you the truth,” she said.  “There’s nothing here really good.  It is always much better to buy of the makers direct.”

“Do they sell on the instalment plan?” he asked.  There was a wistful effect in his voice which caught her attention.

She looked away—­out through the window on the street below—­for a moment.  Then her eyes returned to his, and regarded him with a comforting, friendly, half-motherly glance, recalling for all the world the way Sister Soulsby had looked at him at odd times.

“Oh, you want it at once—­I see,” she remarked softly.  “Well, this Adelberger is the best value for the money.”

Mr. Ware followed her finger, and beheld with dismay that it pointed toward the largest instrument in the room—­a veritable leviathan among pianos.  The price of this had been mentioned as $600.  He turned over the fact that this was two-thirds his yearly salary, and found the courage to shake his head.

“It would be too large—­much too large—­for the room,” he explained.  “And, besides, it is more than I like to pay—­or can pay, for that matter.”  It was pitiful to be explaining such details, but there was no help for it.

They picked out a smaller one, which Celia said was at least of fair quality.  “Now leave all the bargaining to me,” she adjured him.  “These prices that they talk about in the piano trade are all in the air.  There are tremendous discounts, if one knows how to insist upon them.  All you have to do is to tell them to send it to your house—­you wanted it today, you said?”

“Yes—­in memory of yesterday,” he murmured.

She herself gave the directions, and Thurston’s people, now all salesmen again, bowed grateful acquiescence.  Then she sailed regally across the room and down the stairs, drawing Theron in her train.  The hirelings made salaams to him as well; it would have been impossible to interpose anything so trivial and squalid as talk about terms and dates of payment.