“I like the way you go to business—always neat, always ladylike. No ear-rings, no dingle-dangles and low necks like some of them; always a very clean collar and a quiet tie, I notice—just the thing for the office. But when I take you out rather more, I suppose you will have to have one or two rather special evening gowns and afternoon frocks, and theatre-wraps, and so on. I don’t know what they’re called. No doubt you know the kind of thing to order. All part of the arrangement, you understand. I’ll get a friend of mine in the City, whose wife runs a really first-class dressmaking business, to let me have the address; and then you will go to her—” All cut-and-dried, like all his other schemes! But this was something different—very different as well. —“have yourself fitted out with all that is necessary, and send in the bills to me.” “Please, no. Not that,” I heard myself say quickly. My employer turned upon me a face with some of the imperturbability quite jerked out of it by surprise. “What’s that?” “If you don’t mind, I can’t—I would rather not do so as you suggest about that,” said I, holding my head very high, but feeling myself turn as crimson as the flowers in my coat, and speaking rather shakily, for this was the first time I had ever asserted my own feelings in even the mildest way before him. “I—I know it seems like straining at a gnat after all the camels that I am preparing to swallow. Of course I will _get_ the frocks and things. Only—please, you must allow me to pay for them out of my allowance—my salary.” He looked at me doubtfully. “That seems scarcely fair—to you. It means paying out your own money on things, that—well! I thought that would obviously come out as ‘_business expenses_.’” I said, feeling miserably uncomfortable, “Don’t you see that I can’t possibly allow you to pay for—to give me _frocks_?” “But—don’t you understand that—in the way of business, you will have to allow me to give you other things?” “Other things? What?” “Why, presents. I don’t know what, exactly. You will probably have to come round the shops with me yourself, and tell me. You are the best judge of what a girl would like to show, as gifts, keepsakes, what-nots, from the man to whom she is, presumably, engaged. It is part of this affair!” explained Mr. Waters, a little impatiently, as the taxi was held up at a crossing and waited panting for the signal to get on. “It would ‘look odd,’ as you yourself expressed it once, if I did _not_ offer you presents.” “Presents,” I said, feeling really indignant with him for being so obtuse, “are very different. For one thing, I should not have to keep _them_ always. They would go back to you at the end of the year, as soon as that paper I signed for you is torn up. But—girls don’t take _clothes_ as presents, _ever_!”