Rose, arriving promptly at the hour agreed on, had a wait of fifteen minutes before any of her sisters of the sextette, or Mrs. Goldsmith arrived.  She told the suave manager that she was waiting for friends, but this didn’t deter him from employing a magnificent wave of the hand to summon one of the saleswomen and consigning Rose almost tenderly, to her care.  He didn’t know her, but he knew that that ulster of hers had come straight over from Paris, had cost not less than two hundred dollars, and had been selected by an excellently discriminating eye; and that was enough for him.

“I don’t want anything just now,” Rose told the saleswoman.  But she hadn’t, in these few weeks of Clark Street, lost the air of one who will buy if she sees anything worth buying.  In fact, the saleswoman thought, correctly, that she knew her and was in for a shock a little later when Mrs. Goldsmith and the other five members of the sextette arrived.

Meanwhile, she showed Rose the few really smart things they had in the store—­a Poiret evening gown, a couple of afternoon frocks from Jennie, and so on.  There wasn’t much, she admitted, it being just between seasons.  Their Palm Beach things weren’t in yet.

Rose made a few appreciative, but decidedly respect-compelling comments, and faithfully kept one eye on the door.

The rest of the sextette arrived in a pair and a trio.  One of them squealed, “Hello, Dane!” The saleswoman got her shock on seeing Rose nod an acknowledgment of this greeting and just about that time, they heard Mrs. Goldsmith explaining who she was and the nature of her errand, to the manager.  The necessary identifications got themselves made somehow.  They weren’t in any sense introductions, everybody in the store felt that plainly.  Mrs. Goldsmith was touching the skirts of musical comedy with a very long pair of tongs.  There was absolutely no connection, social or personal, between herself and the young persons who were to wear the frocks she was going to buy.

She stood them up and stared at them through her eye-glasses, discussed their various physical idiosyncrasies with candor, and, one by one, packed them off to try on haphazard selections from the mounds which three industrious saleswomen piled up before her.  You couldn’t deny her the possession of a certain force of character, for not one of the six girls uttered a word of suggestion or of protest.

And the sort of gowns she was exclaiming over with delight and ordering put into the heap of possibilities, were horrible enough to have drawn a protest from the wax figures in the windows.  The more completely the fundamental lines of a frock were disguised with sartorial scroll-saw work, the more successful this lady felt it to be.  An ornament, to Mrs. Goldsmith, did not live up to its possibilities, unless it in turn were decorated with ornaments of its own; like the fleas on the fleas on the dog.