“What kind of a dress do you want, sir?” asked the saleslady,—­for we are impelled to call her so.

“S-silk cloth,” said Jethro.

“What shades of silk would you like, sir?”

“Shades? shades?  What do you mean by shades?”

“Why, colors,” said the saleslady, giggling openly.

“Green,” said Jethro, with considerable emphasis.

The saleslady clapped her hand over her mouth and led the way to another model.

“You don’t call that green—­do you?  That’s not green enough.”

They inspected another dress, and then another and another,—­not all of them were green,—­Jethro expressing very decided if not expert views on each of them.  At last he paused before two models at the far end of the room, passing his hand repeatedly over each as he had done so often with the cattle of Coniston.

“These two pieces same kind of goods?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“Er-this one is a little shinier than that one?”

“Perhaps the finish is a little higher,” ventured the saleslady.

“Sh-shinier,” said Jethro.

“Yes, shinier, if you please to call it so.”

“W-what would you call it?”

By this time the saleslady had become quite hysterical, and altogether incapable of performing her duties.  Jethro looked at her for a moment in disgust, and in his predicament cast around for another to wait on him.  There was no lack of these, at a safe distance, but they all seemed to be affected by the same mania.  Jethro’s eye alighted upon the back of another customer.  She was, apparently, a respectable-looking lady of uncertain age, and her own attention was so firmly fixed in the contemplation of a model that she had not remarked the merriment about her, nor its cause.  She did not see Jethro, either, as he strode across to her.  Indeed, her first intimation of his presence was a dig in her arm.  The lady turned, gave a gasp of amazement at the figure confronting her, and proceeded to annihilate it with an eye that few women possess.

“H-how do, Ma’am,” he said.  Had he known anything about the appearance of women in general, he might have realized that he had struck a tartar.  This lady was at least sixty-five, and probably unmarried.  Her face, though not at all unpleasant, was a study in character-development:  she wore ringlets, a peculiar bonnet of a bygone age, and her clothes had certain eccentricities which, for, lack of knowledge, must be omitted.  In short, the lady was no fool, and not being one she glanced at the giggling group of saleswomen and—­wonderful to relate—­they stopped giggling.  Then she looked again at Jethro and gave him a smile.  One of superiority, no doubt, but still a smile.

“How do you do, sir?”

“T-trying to buy a silk cloth gown for a woman.  There’s two over here I fancied a little.  Er—­thought perhaps you’d help me.”

“Where are the dresses?” she demanded abruptly.