His face had puckered up again. Then suddenly it unpuckered. “Tell you what you might do,” he solved it. “Just take 'em along and send them to your mother. Now your mother might be real glad to have 'em.” Virginia stared. And then an awful thing happened. What she was thinking about was the letter she could send with the stockings. “Mother dear,” she would write, “as I stood at the counter buying myself some stockings to-day along came a nice man--a stranger to me, but very kind and jolly--and gave me--” There it was that the awful thing happened. Her dimple was showing--and at thought of its showing she could not keep it from showing! And how could she explain why it was showing without its going on showing? And how--? But at that moment her gaze fell upon the clerk, who had taken the dimple as signal to begin putting the stockings in a box. The Frenchwoman's eyebrows soon put that dimple in its proper place. “And so the _petite Americaine_ was not too--oh, not _too_--” those French eyebrows were saying. All in an instant Virginia was something quite different from a little girl with a dimple. “You are very kind,” she was saying, and her mother herself could have done it no better, “but I am sure our little joke had gone quite far enough. I bid you good-morning”. And with that she walked regally over to the glove counter, leaving red and grey and black hosiery to their own destinies. “I loathe them when their eyebrows go up,” she fumed. “Now _his_ weren't going up--not even in his mind.” She could not keep from worrying about him. “They'll just 'do' him,” she was sure. “And then laugh at him in the bargain. A man like that has no _business_ to be let loose in a store all by himself.” And sure enough, a half hour later she came upon him up in the dress department. Three of them had gathered round to “do” him. They were making rapid headway, their smiling deference scantily concealing their amused contempt. The spectacle infuriated Virginia. “They just think they can _work_ us!” she stormed. “They think we're _easy_. I suppose they think he's a _fool_. I just wish they could get him in a business deal! I just wish--!” “I can assure you, sir,” the English-speaking manager of the department was saying, “that this garment is a wonderful value. We are able to let you have it at so absurdly low a figure because--” Virginia did not catch why it was they were able to let him have it at so absurdly low a figure, but she did see him wipe his brow and look helplessly around. “Poor _thing_,” she murmured, almost tenderly, “he doesn't know what to do. He just _does_ need somebody to look after him.” She stood there looking at his back. He had a back a good deal like the back of her chum's father at home. Indeed there were various things about him suggested “home.” Did one want one's own jeered at? One might see crudities one's self, but was one going to have supercilious outsiders coughing those sham coughs behind their hypocritical hands?