Disappointed, but still hoping for some acknowledgment that would give him what he wanted, he continued to putter with the goods, when she broke in with harsh decision: 

“I think she would prefer the gray.”

“Oh, do you?” said he, with just a hint of disapproval at the suggestion.  “I like brown best, myself; but let it be the gray.  Ten yards,” he ordered.  “She was particular to say that she wanted ten yards, and that I was to be sure and purchase the dress at the shop adjoining the drug-store.  You see I have obeyed her,” he added with a touch of senility in his quiet chuckle which threw the busy woman off her guard.

“I fear,” said she, “that the dress I sold her before will not prove very becoming.  But gray is always good.  That’s why I advised it.”

“I see, I see,” chattered away the old man, not without some slight compunction.  “But in my opinion she’s too dark for such somber dresses.  I’ve told her so a score of times.”  Then as he watched the woman before him rolling up the goods he proceeded to ask with fussy importunity what she thought the express charges were likely to be, for he wanted to pay the whole bill and be done with it.

She was caught—­caught fairly this time, though I doubt if she ever knew it.

“We don’t often send up the river,” said she.  “But I should say that for a package of this size and weight the charges would be about forty cents.  But that you can leave her to pay.  She will be quite willing to do so, I am sure.”

“Of course, of course—­I didn’t think of that.  She’ll pay for it, of course she’ll pay for it.”  And he continued to fuss and chat, with that curious mixture of native shrewdness and senile interest in little things which he thought most likely to impress the woman attending him, and trap her into giving him the complete address.

But she was too wary, or too much preoccupied with her own affairs, to let the cat any farther out of the bag, and he had to be content with her promise, that the package should be given to the expressman as early as possible the next morning.

The feebleness he showed while leaving the shop was in marked contrast, however, to the vigor with which he took down the telephone-receiver in the booth of the neighboring drug-store.  But she was not there to see; nor anyone else who had the least interest in his movements.  He could, therefore, give all the emphasis he desired to the demand he made upon Headquarters for a close watch to be set on the adjoining dry-goods shop, for the purpose of intercepting and obtaining the address of a certain package, on the point of being expressed from there to some place up the river.

Then he went home; for by now he was fully as tired as his years demanded.

XXI

PERPLEXED

“Elvira Brown.”

“Elvira Brown?  That the name on the package?”