The assistant smiled respectfully, the master stretched his lips in a hideous grin, and Sascha, his face flushing, retreated behind the counter. I did not like the tone of these conversations. Many of the words they used were unintelligible to me, and sometimes they seemed to be speaking in a strange language. When a lady customer came in, the master would take his hands out of his pockets, tug at his mustache, and fix a sweet smile upon his face--a smile which wrinkled his cheeks, but did not change the expression of his dull eyes. The assistant would draw himself up, with his elbows pressed closely against his sides, and his wrists respectfully dangling. Sascha would blink shyly, trying to hide his protruding eyes, while I would stand at the door, surreptitiously scratching my hands, and observing the ceremonial of selling. Kneeling before the customer, the assistant would try on shoes with wonderfully deft fingers. He touched the foot of the woman so carefully that his hands trembled, as if he were afraid of breaking her leg. But the leg was stout enough. It looked like a bottle with sloping shoulders, turned neck downward. One of these ladies pulled her foot away one day, shrieking: "Oh, you are tickling me!" "That is--because--you are so sensitive," the assistant explained hastily, with warmth. It was comical to watch him fawning upon the customers, and I had to turn and look through the glass of the door to keep myself from laughing. But something used to draw me back to watch the sale. The proceedings of the assistant were very interesting, and while I looked at him I was thinking that I should never be able to make my fingers move so delicately, or so deftly put boots on other people's feet. It often happened that the master went away from the shop into a little room behind it, and he would call Sascha to him, leaving the assistant alone with the customer. Once, lingering over the foot of a red-haired woman, he took it between his fingers and kissed it. "Oh," breathed the woman, "what a bold man you are!" He puffed out his cheeks and emitted a long-drawn-out sound: "O--o--h!" At this I laughed so much that, to keep my feet, I had to hang on to the handle of the door. It flew open, and my head knocked against one of the panes of glass and broke it. The assistant stamped his foot at me, my master hit me on the head with his heavy gold ring, and Sascha tried to pull my ears. In the evening, when we were on our way home, he said to me, sternly: "You will lose your place for doing things like that. I 'd like to know where the joke comes in." And then he explained: "If ladies take a fancy to the assistant, it is good for trade. A lady may not be in need of boots, but she comes in and buys what she does not want just to have a look at the assistant, who pleases her. But you--you can't understand! One puts oneself out for you, and--" This incensed me. No one put himself out for me, and he least of all.