The policeman and the
shopwalker smiled. It was so easy to be the wife of a well-known
philanthropist, and in these days all the best pickpockets had their
carriages waiting outside.
'I know this lady by sight,' said Lily. 'She visited the common-rooms
last year to see the arrangements, with Mr. Hugo, and he called her Lady
Brice, and I can tell you he'll be very angry with you.'
'And who are _you_, my young friend?' said the policeman sceptically,
and threateningly.
'I'm--'
The formula proved useless. Lady Brice (_nee_ Kentucky-Webster) was led
off in all her vast speechless, outraged impeccability, and poor little
Lily was glad to escape with her freedom and the memory of Lady Brice's
grateful bow.
She ran, gliding in and out between the knots of visitors, until she was
stopped by a pair of doors being suddenly shut and fastened in her face.
The reason for the obstruction was plain. Those doors admitted to the
blouse department, and the blouse department, as Lily could see through
the diamond panes, was a surging sea of bargain-hunters, amid which
shopwalkers stood up like light-houses, while the girls behind the
counters trembled in fear of being washed away. Discipline, order,
management, had ceased to exist at Hugo's.
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