“Ahem!” coughed Betty.

“And that’s twenty-four, and—­cross—­and two—­and four——­” The girl was counting aloud.

“Why,” murmured Betty Gordon, her eyes dancing, “she’s like Libbie Littell when she is somnambulating—­I guess that is the right word.  Anyway, when Libbie walks in her sleep she talks just like that——­

“Ahem!”

This time Betty almost shouted the announcement of her presence in the shop and finally startled the other girl out of her abstraction.  The latter looked up, winked her eyes very fast, and began to roll up her work in a clean towel.  Betty noticed that her eyes were very blue and were shaded by dark lashes.

“I beg your pardon,” said the shopgirl.  “Have you been waiting long?” She came forward quickly and with an air of assurance.  Her look was not a happy one, however, and Betty wondered at her sadness.  “What can I show you?” asked the shopgirl.

She was not much older than Betty herself, but she was more self-possessed and seemed much more experienced than even Betty, much as the latter had traveled and varied as her adventures had been during the previous year and a half.  But now the stranger’s questions brought Betty to a renewed comprehension of what she had actually entered the shop for.

“I’m just crazy about that blouse in the window—­the orange one,” she cried.  “I know you must have made it yourself, for you are knitting another, I see, and that is going to be pretty, too.  But I want this orange one—­if it doesn’t cost too much.”

“The price is twelve dollars.  I hope it is not too much,” said the shopgirl timidly.  “I sold one for all of that before I left Liverpool.”

Betty was as much interested now in the other girl as she was in the orange silk over-blouse.

“Why!” she exclaimed, “you are English, aren’t you?  And you and your family can’t long have been over here.”

“I have been here only two months,” said the girl quietly.

There was a certain dignity in her manner that impressed Betty.  She had very dark, smoothly arranged hair and a beautiful complexion.  She was plump and strongly made, and she walked gracefully.  Betty had noted that fact when she came forward from the back of the shop.

“But you didn’t come over from England all alone?” asked the curious young customer, neglecting the blouse for her interest in the girl who spread out its gossamer body for approval.

“It took only seven days from Liverpool to New York,” said the other girl, looking at Betty steadily, still with that lack of animation in her face.  “I might have come alone; but it was better for me to travel with somebody, owing to the emigration laws of your country.  I traveled as nursemaid to a family of Americans.  But I separated from them in New York and came here.”

“Oh!” Betty exclaimed, not meaning to be impertinent.  “You had friends here in Georgetown?”