“I’ll give you thutty-seven dollas and a half,” said the chef.

“Sorry I can’t take it.  That hawss is sellin’ at present for just one hundred and fifty dollas.”

“Well,” said the chef, “I’ll raise you a dolla and a quahta.  Say thutty-eight and seventy-five.”

“W-ell now, you’re gittin’ up among the figgas where you’re liable to own a hawss.  You just keep right on a raisin’ me, while I sell these ladies some shoes, and maybe you’ll hit it yit, ’fo’e night.”

The girls were trying on shoes on every side now, and they had dispensed with the formality of going in-doors for the purpose.  More than one put out her foot to the clerk for his opinion of the fit, and the shoeman was mingling with the crowd, testing with his hand, advising from his professional knowledge, suggesting, urging, and in some cases artfully agreeing with the reluctance shown.

“This man,” said the chef, indicating Fane, “says you can tell moa lies to the square inch than any man out o’ Boston.”

“Doos he?” asked the shoeman, turning with a pair of high-heeled bronze slippers in his hand from the wagon.  “Well, now, if I stood as nea’ to him as you do, I believe I sh’d hit him.”

“Why, man, I can’t dispute him!” said the chef, and as if he had now at last scored a point, he threw back his head and laughed.  When he brought down his head again, it was to perceive the approach of Clementina.  “Hello,” he said for her to hear, “he’e comes the Boss.  Well, I guess I must be goin’,” he added, in mock anxiety.  “I’m a goin’, Boss, I’m a goin’.”

Clementina ignored him.  “Mr. Atwell wants to see you a moment, Mr. Fane,” she said to the clerk.

“All right, Miss Claxon,” Fane answered, with the sorrowful respect which he always showed Clementina, now, “I’ll be right there.”  But he waited a moment, either in expression of his personal independence, or from curiosity to know what the shoeman was going to say of the bronze slippers.

Clementina felt the fascination, too; she thought the slippers were beautiful, and her foot thrilled with a mysterious prescience of its fitness for them.

“Now, the’e, ladies, or as I may say guls, if you’ll excuse it in one that’s moa like a fatha to you than anything else, in his feelings”—­the girls tittered, and some one shouted derisively—­“It’s true!”—­“now there is a shoe, or call it a slippa, that I’ve rutha hesitated about showin’ to you, because I know that you’re all rutha serious-minded, I don’t ca’e how young ye be, or how good-lookin’ ye be; and I don’t presume the’e’s one among you that’s eve head o’ dancin’.”  In the mirthful hooting and mocking that followed, the shoeman hedged gravely from the extreme position he had taken.  “What?  Well, maybe you have among some the summa folks, but we all know what summa folks ah’, and I don’t expect you to patte’n by them.  But what I will say is that if any young lady within the sound of my voice,”—­he looked round for the applause which did not fail him in his parody of the pulpit style—­“should get an invitation to a dance next winta, and should feel it a wo’k of a charity to the young man to go, she’ll be sorry—­on his account, rememba—­that she ha’n’t got this pair o’ slippas.