“Oh—­how are you Jiffin?” cried Afy, loftily, pretending not to have seen him standing there.  And she condescended to put the tips of her white gloves into the offered hand, as she coquetted with her handkerchief, her veil, and her ringlets.  “I thought you would have shut up your shop to-day, Mr. Jiffin, and taken a holiday.”

“Business must be attended to,” responded Mr. Jiffin, quite lost in the contemplation of Afy’s numerous attractions, unusually conspicuous as they were.  “Had I known that you were abroad, Miss Hallijohn, and enjoying a holiday, perhaps I might have done it, too, in the hope of coming across you somewhere or other.”

His words were bona fide as his admiration.  Afy saw that, so she could afford to treat him rather de haut en bas.  “And he’s as simple as a calf,” thought she.

“The greatest pleasure I have in life, Miss Hallijohn, is to see you go by the shop window,” continued Mr. Jiffin.  “I’m sure it’s like as if the sun itself passed.”

“Dear me!” bridled Afy, with a simper, “I don’t know any good that can do you.  You might have seen me go by an hour or two ago—­if you had possessed eyes.  I was on my way to Miss Carlyle’s,” she continued, with the air of one who proclaims the fact of a morning call upon a duchess.

“Where could my eyes have been?” exclaimed Mr. Jiffin, in an agony of regret.  “In some of those precious butter-tubs, I shouldn’t wonder!  We have had a bad lot in, Miss Hallijohn, and I am going to return them!”

“Oh,” said Afy, conspicuously resenting the remark.  “I don’t know anything about that sort of thing.  Butter-tubs are beneath me.”

“Of course, of course, Miss Hallijohn,” deprecated poor Jiffin.  “They are very profitable, though, to those who understand the trade.”

“What is all that shouting?” cried Afy, alluding to a tremendous noise in the distance, which had continued for some little time.

“It’s the voters cheering Mr. Carlyle.  I suppose you know that he’s elected, Miss Hallijohn?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“The other was withdrawn by his friends, so they made short work of it, and Mr. Carlyle is our member.  God bless him! there’s not many like him.  But, I say, Miss Hallijohn, whatever is it that the other one has done?  Murder, they say.  I can’t make top nor tail of it.  Of course we know he was bad enough before.”

“Don’t ask me,” said Afy.  “Murder’s not a pleasant subject for a lady to discuss.  Are all these customers?  Dear me, you’ll have enough to do to attend to them; your man can’t do it all; so I won’t stay talking any longer.”

With a gracious flourish of her flounces and wave of the handkerchief Afy sailed off.  And Mr. Jiffin, when he could withdraw his fascinated eyes from following her, turned into his shop to assist in serving four or five servant girls, who had entered it.

“It wouldn’t be such a bad catch, after all,” soliloquized Afy, as she and her crinoline swayed along.  “Of course I’d never put my nose inside the shop—­unless it was to order things like another customer.  The worst is the name.  Jiffin, Joe Jiffin.  How could I ever bear to be called Mrs. Joe Jiffin!  Not but—­Goodness me! what do you want?”